Two homes on the same Hampstead Garden Suburb road exchanged with the same estate agent on the same date as new research suggests the number of property transactions to fall through dropped significantly over the summer.

Ham & High: The other Wildwood Terrace house, which sold for £2,740,000The other Wildwood Terrace house, which sold for £2,740,000 (Image: Archant)

According to research from home buyer Quick Move Now, the house sale fall through rate was 19.6 per cent in Q3 of this year, the lowest level since late 2012 and a 17 per cent drop on the previous quarter.

Danny Luke, business manager at Quick Move Now said: “As the property market becomes more competitive, buyers are coming to the market better prepared in order to make themselves more attractive to vendors when competing for property.

“Often, buyers will already have sought financial advice, have mortgage offers in place, and taken time to really consider affordability so they know what they can afford and they know what they’re looking for, so when they find a good property they want to snap it up as quickly as possible and not risk losing out to another buyer.”

The research would seem to be born out by the exchange of two properties on Wildwood Road, NW11 on October 2 this year. One property sold for £2,740,000, having been listed more than a year earlier at £2,795,000. The other sold for its original asking price £1,600,000, having been listed in late May this year.

Both properties had offers made in early summer 2015 which subsequently fell through as the potential buyers struggled to get finance. Successful offers were then made on the smaller property in late July, and the larger in early September.

However, Daniel Baum, who oversaw the exchange of the two properties for Glentree is hesitant to infer too much beyond coincidence to the same-day sales.

He said: “They just happened to exchange on the same day, which is very very unusual. In both instance we weren’t the original agent. We rescued the owners from having not been able to sell. A bit of tenacity by myself was rewarded.

“If you get houses at the right price in the right road they’ll sell. Wildwood Road is such a pretty street and it really comes into its own during the summer because it’s close to the Heath Extension. It has an aura about it.”

Mr Baum said that part of the reason for deals falling through was to do with stricter mortgage regulations meaning that lenders were taking longer to process applications.

He said: “I don’t think the drop out rate is the issue, it’s the time taken to do these things.

“I’m always sceptical when I hear these statistics because they’re national. I think the more pertinent issue in these areas is people paying non-refundable deposits so deals are less likely to fall through.

“It’s always been the case at the higher end of the market that deals were done this way but it’s spread to the more every day market too now, the £1 to £3 million price range because of the shortage of property.”