Around 84% of property transactions are taking 3-4 months to complete when going from the acceptance of an offer to completion.
According to the Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ (CLC’s) quarterly tracker, around 12% said transactions took around five months and around 1.16% said transactions could take six or more months.
The report found that 55% of conveyancers were ‘confident’ in the current stability of the property market.
Around a third said they were ‘neutral’, while around 11% said they were ‘somewhat unconfident’ and only 1% said they were ‘very unconfident’.
However, only 17% of respondents said there had been an improvement in the conveyancing process, adding that the industry needed efforts to embrace new processes and IT needed to be redoubled.
Approximately 20% said they were ‘very unconfident’ about the speed and efficiency of the conveyancing process improving, and 36% said they were ‘somewhat unconfident’. Only 16% said they were ‘neutral’.
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The report added that there was “little convergence” among buyers and sellers in confidence levels, with less than a third of buyers and sellers showing positivity about current property market conditions.
Stephen Ward, CLC’s head of strategy and external relations, said: “It’s good to see that confidence levels are high. But 2025 holds a lot in store for the property market. Next month’s stamp duty land tax (SDLT) changes will undoubtedly have an impact. We also expect to see interest rates continue to gradually trend downwards.
“The introduction of material information aims to improve transparency and reduce delays caused by unexpected revelations late in the transaction and it should really start to have an impact in 2025. It will be valuable to see how all of this is reflected in the future editions of this survey, especially with the government’s recent process [and] commitment to working with the industry to reform the property transfer process.”
