"Selling a home takes far too long. And more often than not, the reason for this is unnecessary inefficiencies within the selling and buying process"
- Ruth Beeton - Home Sale Pack
New research from Home Sale Pack has found that a lack of speed, efficiency and urgency are the biggest pain points being reported by UK home sellers.
Home Sale Pack has commissioned a survey of 1,019 home sellers who have sold in the last three years to find out what the biggest issues were that they faced on their selling journey.
Slow conveyancing
The survey reveals that the biggest pain point faced by today’s home sellers is an agonisingly slow conveyancing process, as reported by 30% of recent sellers.
Conveyancing refers to all of the legal processes that require completing while buying or selling a home. It is a notoriously slow process due to a myriad of inefficiencies that sellers face along the way.
For example, one significant part of conveyancing is the Local Authority Search, in which all of the vital information about a property and its surroundings must be collected by the relevant local authority, taking an average of two weeks to complete.
But some local authorities are much slower than others. In some cases, the amount of time it takes to complete a search has increased by 933% to take as long as 62 days.
Inactive industry professionals
Another significant pain point for sellers is slow estate agents who aren’t proactive enough to hurry the selling process along, as is attested to by 19% of recent sellers.
A good estate agent is always a proactive estate agent. This is because they take it upon themselves to regularly and tenaciously chase down any required documents and signatures, and are always calling the various selling stakeholders to see if there’s anything that needs providing from the seller to keep the process running smoothly. When an agent fails to be proactive, simple tasks can sit incomplete for far too long, causing unnecessary and frustrating delays.
Poor communication
12% of sellers say that poor communication from the buyer and their professionals is a major obstacle to an efficient sale.
There are many moving parts involved in buying and selling, and lots of information needs to be shared between various parties. Poor communication from any side makes it nearly impossible for the process to run efficiently because neither side of the deal is fully aware of what is happening on the other side which means opportunities for efficiency are often completely missed and the whole process becomes more and more dragged out.
Chains
11% of sellers report frustration arising from delays caused by chains.
Usually, this means that their buyer is unable to complete their side of the deal quickly because they’re experiencing issues with selling their existing property, and the funds which they require to complete their onward purchase. The number of homes linked to one chain can pile up, with inefficiencies in one purchase causing delays in all of the others.
What else is causing problems for sellers?
10% of sellers report problems arising from buyers changing their minds about making the purchase when they’re already part-way through the process, while fall-throughs (5%), misleading property valuations (4%), problematic survey results (4%), gazundering (2%), mortgage provider down-valuations (2%), and poorly marketed properties (1%) are also causing problems.
Ruth Beeton, Co-Founder of Home Sale Pack, says: “Selling a home takes far too long. And more often than not, the reason for this is unnecessary inefficiencies within the selling and buying process.
"Most of these inefficiencies are the result of archaic practices that have remained the same for decades despite the introduction of sophisticated tech innovations that can eliminate inefficiency with minimal additional cost to either the buyer, seller, estate agent, or conveyancer.
"We, alongside many other great companies in the residential property space, are dedicated to dragging the industry into the modern world, urging them to use simple but powerful tech solutions that will benefit everyone involved by making buying and selling easier and faster.
"The good news is that an increasing number of property professionals are now adopting these solutions, so we fully expect the coming years to see a huge reduction in the amount of time it takes to sell a home.”
