The postcodes where properties are selling the fastest

If you’ve sold a house recently and it felt like it took an age, you aren’t alone. It currently takes 216 days on average to find a buyer and complete the sale of a property across Great Britain.

The average time it takes to find a buyer across England, Wales and Scotland was 62 days and the time taken to complete a purchase was 154 days in June, Rightmove finds.

Sellers with flats who have found a buyer are facing the longest wait to complete – an average of 169 days. In contrast, owners of terraced and semi-detached houses are waiting 149 days on average to complete a purchase after finding a buyer.

Johan Svanstrom, Rightmove’s CEO said this was 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,” he said.

Delays in the house-selling process were caused by a number of factors including longer chains, legal hold-ups and complications involved with selling leasehold properties.

Rightmove also said a big driver of long competition times was conveyancing solicitors dealing with high caseloads. It comes with £205 billion worth of residential property currently on sale on the Rightmove website, according to the portal’s own figures, which, if sold, it said could stimulate UK economic growth.

The regions where properties are selling the fastest and slowest

The analysis reveals homes are generally much quicker to sell in the north of England and Scotland than the south of England and Wales.

It’s currently quickest to sell a home in Scotland with the time to find a buyer combined with the time to complete a purchase sitting at 127 days on average – over four months.

The second quickest place to sell a home is in the North East of England, where the total time to move home is 194 days on average.

The third quickest is Yorkshire and the Humber, with the total time to move home taking on average 207 days.

Homes take the longest to sell across Great Britain in London. It takes 70 days on average to find a buyer and 174 days to complete a purchase, a total wait of 244 days (or over eight months), Rightmove found.

Source: Rightmove

The local authorities where it’s fastest and slowest to sell a home

The 10 local authorities where it’s quickest to sell a home after finding a buyer are all in Scotland, according to Rightmove.

It is quickest to complete the sale of a property in Clackmannanshire where the average wait time is 76 days, then Angus and Dumfries and Galloway where it takes 77 days on average.

The local authority where it takes the least amount of time to complete a house sale outside of Scotland is in North East Derbyshire (120 days), then North East Lincolnshire (122 days) and Chesterfield (124 days).

The time taken to complete a sale is longest in Slough (229 days), Brentwood (209 days) and Colchester (205 days).

Source: Rightmove

How to speed up the house-selling process

Getting paperwork ready and in order can shave weeks of the house-selling process, said Nick Mendes, mortgage technical manager at broker John Charcol.

“Title deeds, Energy Performance Certificate, leasehold info, planning or building regulation certificates, all of it should be sat with your conveyancer on day one, not chased up after an offer lands,” he said.

It’s also worth getting a conveyancer involved before you’ve got a buyer, not after.

“Too many sellers wait until an offer’s accepted to start looking for a solicitor, and that’s time you never get back. Get the ID checks, source of funds and initial searches moving early so things can progress the second a sale is agreed.”

If you’re selling a leasehold property, you can speed up the process by extending a lease through your landlord and requesting management packs as soon as possible.

It can be harder to sell a leasehold property with less time left on a lease while lenders may be reluctant to issue a mortgage to a buyer, which can also delay the house-selling process.

Management packs contain details on what the buyer is purchasing, such as service charges and insurance costs, but can take weeks to arrive.

Mendes added that it’s crucial to set a realistic asking price on your home when putting it on the market. Recent research from Zoopla found many people are setting the initial price too high which means it takes longer for a property to sell, sometimes years.

“Go in too high and have to correct it later, and you’ve just added time on market and given any chain a chance to fall apart,” Mendes said.