Looking to sell your property? Rightmove data shows it's seven months from listing to completion!
It takes an average of 62 days to find a buyer and 154 days from agreed sale to completion in Britain. And that’s just an average – in some parts of the country it’s much longer. This is according to a new Rightmove analysis. See Beaumont Gibbs' tips on how best to prepare your property for sale
London is the slowest region to complete a move, taking an average 174 days from agreed sale to completion. By contrast, in the North East of England, it is 33 days quicker to complete a property transaction.
Scotland is the fastest part of Britain to complete a move from start to finish (98 days on average).
Its different legal processes include greater use of upfront information, Home Reports and earlier certainty for buyers and sellers.
Meanwhile in Britain as a whole it currently takes 216 days on average for a seller to move, made up of 62 days to find a buyer and 154 days to complete the move.
This is the longest at this time of year on record.
Flats are the slowest type of property to complete a move (169 days), versus terraced and semi-detached houses (149 days).
It takes 36 days longer to complete a move than in pre-pandemic 2019, an unwanted 31% increase.
Individual delays can be caused by a variety of factors including chain length, searches and leasehold complexity.
However, a big driver of long completion times is conveyancers and other stakeholders managing increasingly high caseloads, navigating what is a fragmented and manual moving process.
Rightmove analysis earlier this year also found that 23% of transactions initially fall through, while around 6% of property transactions fall through and don’t come back to market within 12 months, with long completion times and an uncertain process a key cause.
The portal says it backs government moves to reform the process, because an improved and shortened home-moving process would benefit estate agents, who often have to hold complex chains together for elongated periods, resulting in completion fees for their work delayed.
Johan Svanstrom, Rightmove’s CEO says: “A healthy housing market depends on people being able to move home easily and with certainty. However, the entire home-moving process currently takes more than seven months on average, making this the longest summer wait on record.
“An average 154 day wait to complete the transaction process itself is simply far too long. Rightmove data shows that in some parts of the country the delays are even more significant. Housing mobility is closely linked to economic growth. We believe greater digitisation of moving journey processes, stronger information standards and transparency to all stakeholders is key.”
Rightmove says it is working to digitise the home-moving journey through the launch of products and consumer home-moving features.
Beaumont Gibbs' thoughts on this:
Sadly we are not surprised to read this news, as we have seen ever increase in how long sales take to go through to completion rising significantly over the past 3-4 years.
Pricing your property correctly at first time of asking is SO IMPORTANT, now more than ever. It is so easy to fall into the trap of just going to the agent who values your property the highest, as more often than not, these properties NEVER sell at their original asking price and then these properties gradually reduce their price over the coming months and in a lot of cases, they end up selling for LESS than the lowest valuation they received, but have wasted months of their valuable time in trying to achieve an unachievable price.
TIPS!
When getting your property valued, most people choose 3-4 agents out to value. If 2-3 agents value it for more or less the same price, but the last agent values it much higher, ask them to show you EVIDENCE of how they came to that valuation. If they can show you similar properties in the same area that have sold for that price, then fair enough, you may want to try the price with that agent, but if they CANNOT then our advice is to choose one of the other agents that came in at the similar price range as each other.
BEFORE YOU PUT YOUR PROPERTY ON THE MARKET FOR SALE:
Do not forget your front and rear gardens! We see so many properties where they have just paid attention to the inside, but left their gardens to become overgrown, with weeds growing everywhere and it just makes your property feel unloved! Your outdoor space is a HUGE selling point, so do not waste your chance to make a good first impression. Remember, the outside of your home is the first thing they see when walking past, so ensure the paintwork looks nice and fresh, no cobwebs in your porch and if you have a wooden front door, make sure the paintwork or wood stain are nice, clean and fresh to make a great first impression.
INSIDE YOUR HOME:
Same sort of advice here. Make sure that any rooms which are looking tired are given a re-fresh. If you have old or stained carpets...change them, if your paintwork is old, scuffed or flaky, get it repainted. For a small amount of investment can make a HUGE difference to not only getting the property sold, but it will also increase your chance of getting a higher sale price.
More and more First Time Buyers are borrowing money from their parents in order to get onto the property ladder and even taking out 40 year mortgage deals to enable them to get onto the property ladder. All of this means that they do not have the spare cash to invest into a property that requires work, EVEN if it is cosmetic work. They would rather look for a property that is more or less ready to move into, rather than one that needs work doing to it.
We hope this information helps and if you need to have a chat with one of our experts, then please do get in touch.
Tel 0208 319 7600 or email: info@beaumontgibbs.com