Home moving in England and Wales takes an average of 179 days from listing to completion; the slowest home moving completion timescales in 12 home moving nations. Across the 12, the average transaction takes 110 days with the US leading the way on 53 days from listing to ‘closing’.
The research has been undertaken by Material Information and digital property pack provider, Moverly, who selected 12 countries is considered UK residents might emigrate to including Italy (159 days), Germany (137 days), Australia (95 days) and UAE (70 days).
While data on the reasons for speedier transactions elsewhere in the world compared to the UK is hard to come by, Gemma Young, Moverly CEO, suggests the ‘unique idiosyncrasies’ in the process causes ‘bumps and obstacles’ that sellers and property professionals have to navigate throughout the selling journey, many of which other countries, she suggests, have managed to iron out over the years.
Despite efforts to modernise the conveyancing process, Young points to what she describes as ‘archaic conveyancing practices’ and ‘elongated windows in which buyers and sellers are legally allowed to change their minds and pull out of transactions’ as major barriers to progress.
“It seems you have to move halfway around the world to access a decent home selling process. The Americans are showing the rest of the world up while the UK is making everyone else look very good! That’s not to say the US model is better, but it’s certainly much faster and we should be doing everything we can to speed up what has become a painfully sluggish journey here in the UK.
Says Young, adding
“Conveyancing is a definite culprit when it comes to delaying the selling process, and this is because too many of the legal processes that pave the way to exchange of contracts have remained unchanged for decades, if not longer. By simply streamlining and digitising many of the conveyancing processes, we have proven that the time to sell can be reduced from up to 70%, which means the UK is perfectly capable of matching the speed of the US market. As more and more agents and conveyancers adopt the tech solutions that are now widely available to them, we expect the UK’s performance to see radical improvement in a short period of time.”
One Response
Total nonsense. It is the implementation of digitalisation, and the ‘computer says no’ phenomenon that has caused this increase in the length of time an average transaction takes.