The time taken for property buyers and sellers to move from offer to exchange now takes longer than it did six years ago, shocking new research has revealed, highlighting how it currently takes on average 135 days, up 45% from 93 days in 2019.

Mortgage consultancy Novus Strategy, using TwentyCI data, reveals that getting properties to exchange has been taking longer and the number of properties being transacted is dropping every year.

For example, while transactions dropped by 3% during the past year – from 131 days – the time taken to get to exchange has lengthened. Also, transaction volumes in January 2019 were 78,830 – very similar to this year – yet the process was much faster.

Prime property owners are also taking the brunt of the delays, with homes selling for more than £1million experiencing an 8% increase in time to exchange to 146 days.

But the data begs the question – why? Novus Strategy says the biggest reason is that the property industry – including lenders, brokers, agents and conveyancers – has yet to ‘line up its ducks’ digitally enough to start speeding up the home selling process despite the best efforts of several industry and Government initiatives.

Progress

“Progress has been made by brokers, lenders and conveyancers but largely in isolation,” says Claire Van der Zan (main image), its CEO.

“Each part of the market has developed its own customer journeys and digital processes, so the challenge now is for the industry to connect those parts together through HDI, solving problems like trust, interoperability and liability simultaneously.”

She says it’s disappointing that time to exchange continues to rise and that the home sales process remains too fragmented.

Increased workload

“All companies involved in the mortgage and residential sales market have faced increasing workload and regulatory obligations in recent years but technology has failed to keep pace,” Van der Zan adds.

“There is only so much efficiency to be gained from solutions that are not interoperable. There remains a huge amount of friction between these businesses when they need to coordinate and communicate with each other, in order to push a transaction forward.

“This is precisely why the Government saw the need for significant reform of the homebuying and selling process in last year’s consultation, and why the recommendations cannot come soon enough.”