Reduce Fall Through
How to reduce your fall through rate.
Most fall throughs are not bad luck. They are stalls that nobody caught until it was too late. Bringing the rate down means keeping commission you had already earned.
23.7%
Agreed UK sales that collapse before completion
36%
Of collapses driven by the buyer withdrawing
33%
Driven by mortgage problems
13%
Driven by a chain breaking, the smallest cause
The real picture
Deals are lost gradually, not in one break.
Agents talk about chains breaking, but in 2026 that is the least common of the main causes. Deals are lost because the buyer goes cold, a mortgage offer runs out, or a solicitor goes quiet for weeks. The losses are spread across the whole transaction, and very few of them are about price.
That matters because you cannot reduce a rate you have misread. If you only watch the chain, you miss the buyer losing confidence and the mortgage offer running out of time, which is where most of the damage happens.
The four things that move the rate
What makes a difference.
Keep an eye on every party
Solicitor, broker, surveyor and lender, on every live deal. The first sign of a stall is a missed reply, long before a missed completion, and you can only act on it if you see it.
Act early
Nine days of silence can be recovered. A lapsed mortgage offer usually cannot. The agencies with the lowest fall through rates step in early, while there is still room to fix things.
Keep the buyer committed
The biggest single cause is the buyer walking away. Regular contact and quick answers stop doubts turning into a withdrawal.
Watch the mortgage offer date
Offers expire. A long transaction can run past the date without anyone noticing. Track the expiry and chase before it lapses.
Why it is hard to do by hand
Nobody can watch everything from memory.
Doing all four by hand means tracking every party on every live deal, every day, for months. At Prime Central London volumes and timelines that is more than memory and a spreadsheet can manage. Something always slips, and it is often the deal that looked safe.
Alunio checks every deal every hour, flags the one that has started to drift, and drafts the chase to the party holding it up, so a negotiator acts early instead of finding out late. There is more on why deals fall through on the page of that name.
See it on your own deals
Find the deal that is slipping now.
Apply for a founding seat and Alunio will score your live deals on the first call. You will see which deal is drifting while there is still time to do something about it.
Apply for a founding seatCommon questions
What is a good fall through rate for an estate agency?
Across the United Kingdom around one in four agreed sales falls through before completion. A boutique that watches every party and acts on the first sign of a stall can keep its own rate well below that. What you control is how many stalls you catch early enough to fix.
What causes most sales to fall through in 2026?
The largest causes are the buyer withdrawing and mortgage problems, followed by slow conveyancing. Chains breaking is the smallest of the common causes. Most deals are lost to delays spread across the whole transaction rather than to one event.
How does Alunio reduce fall through rate?
It scores every live deal for risk every hour, surfaces the one that has started to drift, and drafts the chase to the party holding it up. You act on the first sign of a stall instead of the last, which is the thing that moves the rate most.