Property sales taking over a month longer to complete in Peterborough due to impact of covid restrictions

According to multi-agent property seller Movewise, which analysed estate agency data on half a million property sales across the UK, properties in the region took an average of 170 days to sell over the past month, compared to just 134 days six months ago - an increase by more than a quarter.

The UK average time to sell from a property being listed to contracts being exchanged was a 26 per cent increase nationwide.

Hold-ups with property searches and conveyancers dealing with a backlog of cases due to Covid and high demand, has seen the UK average time to exchange contracts once an offer has been accepted, increase from 96 to 124 days. It is even worse locally, with average contract exchange time increasing from 107 to 134 days.

This means any property that went under offer from late November 2020 onwards, will likely struggle to complete in time to beat the stamp duty deadline on March 31.

Time for properties to come under offer has grown from 27 to 36 days.

Tom Scarborough, CEO and founder of Movewise comments: “These figures show the pressure that property transactions are under at the moment. Although houses are going under offer on average five weeks after initial listing, the bottleneck in the conveyancing process is causing a headache for both sides of the transaction.

“Buyers are still keen to beat the stamp duty deadline and sellers need to be aware of that before accepting an offer. To avoid transactions collapsing, any offer being made now should be on the understanding that completion is likely to be after the tax holiday ends.

“If required, buyers and sellers should enter into any negotiation on price, before the conveyancing process commences. An honest and frank discussion upfront, could avoid a transaction failing further down the line, after money and time has been spent on searches and surveys.”

Over the past month, the UK average time from offer to exchange was 28 days longer - or 29 per cent - when compared to the average time over the past six months.

This confirms there is a bottleneck in the conveyancing process as councils struggle to handle the level of property searches being requested and conveyancers drown under an increased workload, with both bodies mainly having to work from home under Covid conditions, says Movewise.