Exchange time now 135 days – up 45% since 2019

The time it takes to exchange contracts has risen to 135 days, according to analysis by Novus Strategy – 45% longer than in 2019 and 3% higher than last year.

The increase comes despite a 3% drop in property transactions year-on-year, with HMRC recording 79,880 transactions at the end of January 2026 compared with 82,350 in 2025.

Using data from property analytics firm TwentyCi, Novus found that the average time to exchange has risen by 45% since 2019, when transactions took 93 days to complete. “Interestingly, transaction volumes in January 2019 were 78,830 – very similar to this year – yet the process was significantly faster,” the company pointed out.

The biggest increase in time to exchange was recorded in the £1 million-plus price bracket, with a rise of 8% in a year taking the average time to 146 days.

“At this higher end, transactions often involve more complex financing arrangements, additional legal scrutiny and longer chains, all of which can extend timelines,” Novus Strategy explained.

‘Time to exchange’ excludes ‘time to sell’, which typically moves in line with market demand. This stood at 82 days in 2019, 83 days last year and is currently 86, taking the whole buying process to an average of 221 days, or around seven months and two weeks.

“It’s disappointing to see that time to exchange is still rising, and this metric has been trending upwards for some time,” said Claire Van der Zant, CEO at Novus Strategy.

“It only confirms what we, and many others across the industry, have been saying for a long time, which is that the ecosystem remains too fragmented.

“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.

“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. Data captured digitally in one organisation cannot easily be reused in the next, and what you end up with is a fragile digital journey even though individual solutions might be extremely powerful in isolation.

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

“Progress has been made by brokers, lenders and conveyancers but largely in isolation. 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.”