Property business failures, excluding developers but including estate and letting agents plus some property investment companies, hit 101 in the first quarter of 2016, figures from the Insolvency Service have revealed.

The figures are well down on the same period last year when there were 141, but Bob Sturges, head of PR and communications at financial firm Fortwell Capital, is warning that there could be more insolvencies during the rest of this year.

He says that tax and Stamp Duty changes are putting pressure on the prime residential market while tougher mortgage criteria are making it harder to get a home loan.

Sturges said: “From 2010 until the end of Q1 2016, the UK real estate sector enjoyed something of a mini-boom.

“The reasons are varied but include high levels of confidence, and rising demand (from both residential and commercial clients).

“The figures from the Insolvency Service doubtless reflect this. But change was already in the wind well before the EU Referendum.

“George Osborne’s tax and Stamp Duty interventions added pressure to a prime residential sector that was looking both over-priced and over-supplied, and fresh substantial regulatory obligations imposed in turn by the FCA and the EU combined to make it more difficult to obtain a mortgage.”

The Insolvency Service data doesn’t distinguish between commercial and residential property businesses, but it does break down the data into three categories.

In the first quarter of 2016 there were 18 insolvencies of firms buying and selling their own real estate – ie, property investors; 44 of firms concerned with renting and property management; and 39 estate agents.

Generally the overall number of insolvencies in the property sector, excluding developers, have been falling. There were 417 in the whole of 2015, down from 516 in 2014, Insolvency Service data shows.