THE price of a home across the south may be shooting up and the right property in the region difficult to find.

Despite all the issues hitting the property market in Hampshire buyers seem reluctant to adopt gazumpinging tactics to get the home they really want.

In fact Southampton has the lowest rate of house buyer gazumping in the UK, an estate agent says.

Research from the online company emoov.co.uk shows that despite a shortage of housing on the UK property market, the number of buyers being gazumped has dropped since last October.

In total the practice, which involves a buyer succeeding in acquiring a property by making a higher offer than one that has already been accepted, has plummeted by about 40 per cent in the last 10 months.

And at two per cent, Southampton had the lowest rate in the UK – contrasting with cities like Sheffield, where 29 per cent of buyers had been gazumped.

Russell Quirk, founder and CEO of eMoov.co.uk, said: “It will come as a surprise to many that gazumping has dropped across the nation, but it’s a welcome surprise nevertheless.

“We’ve kept a close eye on the London market especially and given the lower levels of demand experienced since the start of the year, the drop in gazumping reflects that the insanity of the London market has simmered a little.

“In previous years property sellers, especially in London, knew that they had a queue of buyers stood outside their door.

“Even open days became fiercely competitive, so even if you did lose out you had a direct route to the seller in order to gazump the accepted buyer. This all helped towards the rise of gazumping.”

Sheffield is crowned as the new gazumping capital of the UK after a 25 per cent increase over the last ten months, while Plymouth and Newcastle were the only other two cities to see the practice increase.