Conveyancing Delays
Everyone agreed weeks ago. So why has nothing moved?
Conveyancing now runs around 123 days from agreed to exchange, and far longer in prime London. Most of that time is not work. It is waiting nobody is watching.
123 days
Average sale agreed to exchange across the UK
6 to 12 months
A typical Prime Central London transaction
Weeks
A local authority search can sit in a queue
23.7%
Agreed UK sales that die before they complete
Where The Time Goes
The delay you never see coming.
Searches sit in a queue
In a slow borough a local authority search can wait for weeks. The deal looks alive while it quietly waits on a desk no agent can see.
Enquiries wait on a reply
A solicitor raises enquiries, the other side takes nine days to answer, and nobody notices until the buyer asks why nothing has moved.
The mortgage valuation drifts
A valuation is not instructed on time, the offer edges toward expiry, and weeks vanish before anyone flags it.
The chain waits on its slowest link
A long transaction moves at the pace of whoever is furthest behind. One stalled party holds up everyone above them.
When Delay Becomes Collapse
Time is not neutral. It kills deals.
Every extra week is another chance for a buyer to lose nerve or a mortgage offer to lapse. Delay is not just frustrating. It is the soil that fall through grows in. Around one in four agreed sales never completes, and most of those deaths started as a silence nobody chased.
You cannot make a search office move faster. You can make sure none of your own deals are quietly waiting on a stall while the clock runs down.
How To Take The Dead Time Out
Score the delay. Chase the cause.
Alunio scores every live deal for delay risk each morning and surfaces the one drifting before it becomes a problem. When a party goes quiet past their date, it drafts the chase naming them and the date they owe you. You read it and send.
The result is fewer deals waiting on a silence, and fewer slow deals becoming dead ones. Read why deals fall through, or see it on your own pipeline.
Find Your Slow Deals
See which deal is quietly waiting.
Apply for a founding seat and Alunio will score your live deals on the spot. You will see exactly where time is leaking out of your pipeline.
Apply for a founding seatCommon questions
How long does conveyancing take in 2026?
On average around 123 days from sale agreed to exchange across the United Kingdom. In Prime Central London, where chains are long and buyers are often international, the same process can run six to twelve months.
Why does conveyancing take so long?
The time is lost in the gaps. Local authority searches sit in a queue. Enquiries wait on a reply. A mortgage valuation is not instructed on time. None of it is dramatic. Each stage quietly waits on a desk nobody is watching.
How can an agent speed up conveyancing?
You cannot make a search office move faster, but you can stop your own deals from waiting on a silence. Checking every live deal every hour, reading every message the moment it arrives, and chasing on the first sign of a stall removes the dead time that turns a slow deal into a collapsed one. That is what Alunio does.