Tackling gazumping and gazundering: lessons from Scotland and Ireland

Posted on: 28 July, 2026

Can we stop gazumping and gazundering? Reforming the Residential Property Market: Lessons from Scotland and Ireland by David Hourihan

Following his appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box Live: House Sale Nightmares, Associate Professor David Hourihan examines whether proposed reforms can bring greater speed and certainty to the homebuying process in England and Wales, and whether lessons from Scotland’s binding missives and Ireland’s booking deposits could help curb gazumping, gazundering and failed sales.

Five months of conveyancing were almost complete. The seller had moved out, retirement beckoned and the proceeds were intended to fund a new life of travel and adventure. Then, just before exchange, the buyer demanded a £150,000 reduction.

The sale collapsed. Two years later, the seller, anonymised as Susan on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box Live, was still trying to sell. “It’s like a punch in the stomach,” she said. “My life has been on hold.”

This case study on gazundering – where a buyer suddenly lowers their agreed-upon offer at the last minute – is one of the many reasons why attention is turning to the residential sales market in England and Wales. The UK government is proposing major reforms to the homebuying and selling process with the aim of reducing conveyancing delays and improving transactional efficiency.

As former Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, observed in June 2026: “Our reforms will bring this outdated process into the modern age, saving people time and money, and giving them the certainty they deserve.”

In a previous article on the upward-only rent review ban, I considered lessons from the Irish commercial property market. It is similarly instructive to examine Scotland and Ireland in the context of residential sales reform in England and Wales.

I also sought the views of several academic colleagues in the School of Real Estate & Innovation at the University of the Built Environment on the proposed reforms.

The residential market in England and Wales

The residential market in England and Wales is shaped by two interrelated structural issues.

At a macro level, there is a long-standing problem of housing undersupply. This was highlighted at the recent Built Environment Futures Assembly (BEFA) conference in London, themed Sustainable Communities: A Coalition for the Delivery of 1.5 Million Homes. The conference identified persistent barriers to delivery, including planning delays, infrastructure constraints, limited construction capacity, and rising build costs. Despite successive policy interventions, these factors continue to constrain supply.

Study with us:

BSc (Hons) Real Estate Management

MSc Real Estate

At a micro level, the residential conveyancing process remains slow, uncertain, and costly. The period between offer, acceptance and exchange of contracts is characterised by delay, information asymmetry, and the risk of transaction failure, including the well-known issues of gazumping and gazundering, as Susan’s story above highlights.

Together, these structural and transactional inefficiencies contribute to affordability pressures and widespread frustration within the market.

The UK Government’s proposed reforms seek to address recognised inefficiencies in the conveyancing process. In particular, they aim to reduce gazumping and shorten the period of uncertainty between offer, acceptance and exchange of contracts.

Lessons from Scotland and Ireland

Given the scale of reform, it is useful to consider alternative models in neighbouring jurisdictions where residential transactions operate under different legal frameworks. Both Scotland and Ireland offer a greater degree of early-stage commitment than England and Wales, providing useful comparative insight.

Scotland: missives and early contractual certainty

BSc Access Module Programme Leader David Hunt observed that:

“In Scotland greater certainty in conveyancing comes from a combination of earlier contractual commitment and improved upfront information. The result is efficient transaction management.”

Residential transactions in Scotland are governed by the system of missives, comprising formal contractual correspondence exchanged between solicitors.

Once concluded, missives create a binding contract at an earlier stage than is typical in England and Wales, often shortly after agreement of price and key terms.

This structure has several consequences:

Legal commitment arises earlier in the transaction lifecycle.
Gazumping is effectively eliminated once missives are concluded.
Transactions generally experience greater certainty and lower fall-through rates.

However, it requires more front-loaded due diligence, with parties expected to resolve key issues before contract formation.

While procedurally more demanding, the Scottish system is widely regarded as delivering greater early-stage certainty than the current framework in England and Wales.

Scotland: ‘Increasingly chain-based and potential bias’

However, commenting on recent developments, MSc Real Estate Programme Leader Alison Andrews noted that the Scottish market has increasingly become chain-based, with missives often concluded later in the process.

As a result, sales may fall through due to chain disruption or purchasers failing to secure sales of their own property, rather than through gazumping. She observed that earlier practice saw missives concluded significantly in advance of settlement, supported by legal consequences for non-performance, including cost and loss exposure. This earlier certainty has, in practice, become less pronounced.

Diana Hardstaff, senior lecturer in Real Estate, also highlighted that the upfront cost of the Home Report, borne by the seller, may introduce potential bias in the process, as sellers are able to appoint the surveyor.

She suggested that this issue would require careful consideration in any reform model seeking to replicate elements of the Scottish system.

Ireland: booking deposits and structured commitment

In Ireland, residential transactions typically involve booking deposits paid upon acceptance of an offer, usually through estate agents.

Although not always legally equivalent to a binding contract, the deposit acts as a strong commercial commitment mechanism.

The process generally:

Secures the property at an early stage.
Encourages progression towards formal contract.
Reduces the risk of late-stage withdrawal.
Is followed by contract formation once due diligence has been completed.

While this approach does not eliminate transactional risk to the same extent as Scotland, it introduces a structured form of soft commitment that improves discipline and reduces volatility in the transaction process.

Lecturer Tony Wallace (Director, Wallace Real Estate, Limerick, Ireland), when asked about booking deposits in Irish residential property sales, observed:

“They play a crucial role in bringing discipline and clarity to the sales process. While booking deposits don’t create a legally binding commitment at that stage, they significantly reduce the likelihood of deals falling through, as both parties are invested from an early point. This simple mechanism helps maintain momentum and gives buyers and sellers greater confidence as they progress toward contract.”

Conclusion

The experience of Scotland and Ireland demonstrates that transactional delay and uncertainty are not inevitable features of residential conveyancing but rather reflect underlying legal design choices. Both jurisdictions achieve greater certainty at earlier stages, albeit through different mechanisms: binding missives in Scotland and structured pre-contract commitments in Ireland.

Senior lecturer Jordan Turner commented: “The success of any reform will ultimately depend not on how quickly parties become legally bound, but on whether the law can distinguish between opportunistic behaviour and legitimate renegotiation. That balance will determine whether the new system delivers both certainty and fairness.”

Against this backdrop, reform in England and Wales raises a central question: whether improvements in efficiency and certainty can be achieved within the existing framework, or whether more fundamental structural change is required to address gazumping, transaction failure, and prolonged pre-contract uncertainty.

Reform may not remove every broken chain or sleepless night, but it could make the route from accepted offer to front-door key considerably less precarious.