Conveyancing Delays
Why conveyancing takes so long.
Conveyancing now takes around 123 days from agreed to exchange, and considerably longer in prime London. Most of that time is not work being done. It is waiting, and usually nobody is watching the wait.
123 days
Average sale agreed to exchange across the UK
6 to 12 months
A typical Prime Central London transaction
Weeks
How long a local authority search can sit in a queue
23.7%
Agreed UK sales that fall through before completion
Where the time goes
Four places a transaction stalls.
Searches sit in a queue
In a slow borough a local authority search can take weeks. The deal looks fine from the outside while it waits on a desk the agent cannot see.
Enquiries wait for 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 is late
A valuation is not instructed on time, the offer gets closer to its expiry date, and weeks go by before anyone raises 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 a delay becomes a collapse
The longer it takes, the more likely it is to fall through.
Every extra week is another chance for the buyer to lose confidence or for the mortgage offer to lapse. Around one in four agreed sales never completes, and most of those started with a silence that nobody chased.
You cannot make a search office work faster. You can make sure none of your own deals are sitting on a stall while the clock runs down.
Taking the waiting out
Score the delay and chase the cause.
Alunio scores every live deal for delay risk every hour and surfaces the one that has started to drift before it becomes a problem. When a party goes quiet past their date, it drafts the chase with their name and the date they owe you. You read it and send it.
The result is fewer deals waiting on a silence, and fewer slow deals turning into lost ones.
See your own slow deals
See which deal is waiting on someone.
Apply for a founding seat and Alunio will score your live deals on the first call. You will see where the time is going in 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 take six to twelve months.
Why does conveyancing take so long?
Most of the time is lost in the gaps between stages. Local authority searches sit in a queue, enquiries wait for a reply, a mortgage valuation is instructed late. None of it is dramatic on its own. Each stage waits on a desk nobody is watching.
How can an agent speed up conveyancing?
You cannot make a search office work faster, but you can stop your own deals from waiting on a silence. Checking every live deal regularly and chasing at the first sign of a stall takes out the waiting that turns a slow deal into a lost one. That is what Alunio does.