It is calling for the Government to take steps to prevent people losing thousands of pounds on survey costs, land registry fees and legal bills if they are ‘gazumped’ or their sale falls through for any reason.

Aptly named Get A Move On, the campaign proposes a series of new laws, including a set timeframe of six weeks for a transaction to be completed, standardised fees for surveys and a legally binding contract committing both buyer and seller to a transaction within a week of an offer being accepted.

A look at the numbers and you’ll see why a campaign like this is, in my opinion, long overdue.

According to research by online estate agent eMoov.co.uk, the company behind the Get A Move On campaign, a staggering 466,000 property transactions fall through every year with an average of £1,752 wasted per failed transaction. This is equivalent to £800m collectively being thrown down the drain.

And then there is the emotional cost. One in two people claim to have suffered “emotional stress” during the process, while 22% went as far as to describe it as “extremely stressful” and 1 in 5 suffered bouts of insomnia.

And you wonder why they say moving house is the most stressful life event after death and divorce.

Yet Brits remain obsessed with owning property and the Government is clearly committed to helping them onto the property ladder with schemes such as Help to Buy.

But from the statistics above, it is clear that scrambling together a big enough deposit is not the only challenge to homeownership.

If ministers really want to see more people owning their homes they need to modernise the buying and selling process (in England and Wales it has remained unchanged for hundreds of years) and put protections in place to stop consumers haemorrhaging money unnecessarily.

This campaign is a good starting point.

If you want to sign the online petition, visit: http://getamoveon.emoov.co.uk/

Joanna Faith is editor of Your Money