Slowest and Fastest House Sale Markets Revealed (May 2019 Update)
*** Latest data shows that it’s taking an average of 4 months for properties to sell from start to finish across England and Wales. ***
A new local house market insights tool has monitored 93,218 house sales across England and Wales in the 12 months to May 2019.
Professional homebuying team Property Solvers tracks the time period between a property’s initial listing on Rightmove to the point at which it’s officially marked as ‘sold’ at HM Land Registry.
The latest figures revealed that it took an average of just over 16 weeks to sell a property across England and Wales.
The slowest pace was seen in Southend-on-Sea where 526 sellers waited an average of 18 weeks to dispose of their properties over the last year.
In terms of the fastest velocity, a handful of sales in West and East Central London took between 10 and 11 weeks in total.
Across Norwich, Chester, Warrington, Bournemouth, Llandudno, Blackburn, Newport and Swansea sellers were waiting an average of 15 weeks for the whole process to go through (one week less than the national average).
Ruban Selvanayagam from Property Solvers, who heads up the research, commented: “we’re essentially observing how long it takes from the point at which the property is first advertised online, through to viewings, negotiation, agreement on price, surveys, searches, enquiries, exchange and completion.”
“Using the largest dataset of its kind, our aim is to give people a more realistic idea of the time it takes to sell a home.”
Commenting on the latest data itself Selvanayagam added: “although there are some natural delays to be expected, it’s surprising that it still takes so long for house sales to go through – especially in the digital age we live in.”
“Whilst it’s true that the estate agency, conveyancing and mortgage industries continue to embrace the benefits of tech, much work needs to be done to overcome the friction across house sale chains.”
He continued: “as a fast house sale company, we buy for cash and take on several risks which means our transactions are completed in as little as 7 days. However, we’re a business and we wouldn’t suggest that most buyers follow the same path as us.”
Journalist Notes:
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(1) View the data here (available for any area of the UK): https://www.propertysolvers.co.uk/local-house-market-insights/;
(2) View the full regionally split data here: https://www.propertysolvers.co.uk/regional-house-market-insights/;
(3) The table / data can be branded in line with your publications’ own requirements;
(4) A ‘do-follow’ backlink to the tool itself would be very much appreciated!
(5) The data will next be updated on 1st June 2019;
(6) We are more than happy to extrapolate a range of relevant information using this tool anywhere in the UK. Please email ruban@propertysolvers.co.uk;
(7) The co-founders at Property Solvers (James Durr and Ruban Selvanayagam) have over 16 years experience in the property buying, selling and rental space and are available for comment. See our about page for more information regarding our data collection methodology.