The average property is taking 274 days to sell from the point of listing online to being marked as completed by the Land Registry, new analysis from GetAgent has revealed.

However, the findings showed that just 118 days of this is attributed to the actual process of advertising the property and finding a buyer.

GetAgent revealed it is taking a further 156 days for the average property to go through the final conveyancing process and complete – a period equivalent to more than five months.

The estate agent comparison site keeps a comprehensive record of property sales across the nation, using data from online portals to record the point at which a home is listed for sale online and removed once it moves beyond the sold subject to contract phase.

As the first phase of the stamp duty deadline approaches at the end of June, GetAgent suggested there are homebuyers across the nation stuck in “transaction limbo”, due to long delays at the back end of the selling timeline caused by the heightened levels of buyer demand.

“The stamp duty holiday has been a great incentive to coax many homebuyers out of their COVID boltholes and into the market, but this huge influx of buyer demand has had its consequences,” commented GetAgent founder and CEO, Colby Short.

“The industry has struggled to cope and none more so than the conveyancing industry whose failure to keep pace has led to a huge build-up of transactions and very lengthy delays at the back end of the transaction process.

“As a result, the average homebuyer can expect a timeline of five to six months once before they can complete, and that’s once they’ve accepted an offer.

“While the industry is working tirelessly across the board to address the current backlog, it really does highlight how the home buying and selling process in the UK is built on some pretty archaic practices. It also takes a reasonable amount of time for the Land Registry to register a sale once all the hard work is done, so this also adds more time to an already lengthy process.”

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