Conveyancing delays push time to exchange contracts past 100 days

• The average home that exchanged contracts in April had gone under offer 104 days earlier, the first April on record that the national average has stretched beyond 100 days (chart 1).
• That means transaction times are now around four weeks longer than in April 2019, highlighting just how much the buying and selling process has lengthened.
  17% of homes took more than six months to reach exchange after going under offer, up from 13% a year ago and more than three times the share seen a decade ago.
• Much of the delay is being driven by leasehold transactions. The typical leasehold home took 155 days to reach exchange in April, 58 days longer than a freehold property (chart 1).
• Late-stage fall-throughs are rising: nearly one in four (23%) fall-throughs now collapse after three months, up from 18% in 2019 (chart 3).

Aneisha Beveridge, Research Director at Connells Group, said:

“For the first time on record, it is now taking more than 100 days, on average, for a sale to progress from offer agreed to exchange. That highlights how much more drawn out the transaction process has become, particularly since the pandemic. Extra checks, longer chains and tighter legal and compliance requirements are all adding time , with leasehold purchases standing out as the biggest contributor to delays.

“The knock on effect is that buyers and sellers are left exposed for longer once a deal is agreed, and we’re increasingly seeing more transactions collapse later in the process. As sales take longer to work their way through the system, buyers become more exposed to changes in mortgage rates and house prices if conditions shift during that period. That extended uncertainty builds further down the line. This doesn’t just matter for the housing market itself - delayed or failed moves can also weigh on consumer confidence, labour mobility and, ultimately, wider economic growth.”

Time to exchange breaks the 100-day mark

The time it takes to complete a transaction has been edging higher for many years, but the change since the pandemic has been particularly noticeable. In April, the average time from a property going under offer to exchange of contracts in Great Britain reached 104 days, up from 76 days in 2019 and around 60 days in the early 2010s. In fact, 61% of deals now take longer to exchange contracts after a sale is agreed than it takes to find a buyer in the first place.

Longer timelines are changing how transactions move through the market. Nearly one in five homes (17%) now take more than six months to exchange after going under offer, compared with 13% a year ago and just 5% 10 years earlier. As waits lengthen, buyers and sellers stay exposed for longer to changes in mortgage pricing, survey outcomes and personal circumstances, increasing the likelihood that deals unravel later on.

The divergence between cash and mortgaged purchases is starting to re emerge. In April last year, both types of transaction took a similar amount of time to reach exchange. However, greater uncertainty in the mortgage market has widened the gap slightly since then. Homes bought with a mortgage and exchanged in April took nine days longer than cash purchases. The gap remains below the 15 day difference seen in April 2022, when borrowing costs were at their peak and mortgage market volatility was more pronounced.

Leasehold timelines pull further away from freehold

Leasehold properties continue to account for much of the slowdown. In April, the typical leasehold home took 155 days to reach exchange, compared with 97 days for a freehold property.

That 58 day gap between leasehold and freehold transactions is the widest on record and a marked step up from the 13 day difference seen before Covid. More extensive legal requirements and delays by managing agents have slowed the process.

These challenges are felt most clearly in markets with a higher proportion of flats, including London and other major urban centres, where leasehold homes make up a larger share of transactions.

More leasehold deals fall through - and later in the process.

Overall, fall-through rates have been broadly stable in recent years. Since 2019, a decline in fall-throughs among freehold homes has been offset by a rise in leasehold transactions failing to complete.

In 2025, 37% of agreed sales did not reach completion. Freehold fall-throughs stood at 36%, compared with 43% for leasehold sales. This gap has widened steadily since 2019, when the two rates were within two percentage points of each other.

The higher leasehold fall-through rate is generally driven by buyers rather than sellers. Last year, 12% of sellers withdrew from both freehold and leasehold transactions. By contrast, 25% of freehold buyers pulled out, compared with 34% of leasehold buyers.

Freehold fall-throughs occurred after an average of 85 days, while leasehold deals fell through after 115 days. This suggests that the extra time required to obtain and review leasehold information can push transactions further along before problems emerge, making collapses more likely later in the process.

This shows up in the timing of failures. In 2025, almost a quarter of fall-throughs (23%) happened more than three months after a sale was agreed, up from 18% in 2019. Late-stage fall-throughs are most common for flats (29% after three months, versus 26% in 2019), reflecting the greater complexity and longer timelines that typically come with leasehold transactions. For houses, the equivalent figure rose more modestly, from 17% to 19%.