How Long Should Selling a House Really Take?
Ask three people and you'll hear "weeks", "months" and "don't ask". The truthful answer has two halves — and only one of them is hard to speed up.
Split the timeline in two. Half one: listing to offer accepted. With honest pricing, proper photography and full portal exposure, a well-marketed home in a functioning market typically finds its buyer in weeks, not months. When this half drags, the cause is usually visible in the data — wrong price, weak presentation, slow responses to enquiries — and every one of those is fixable.
Half two: offer to completion. This is conveyancing: searches, surveys, mortgage offers, enquiries, and everyone else's chain. Nationally it commonly runs three to five months, and no agent can honestly promise to halve it — local authority search times alone vary wildly. What good management does change is the drift: the days lost between "document requested" and "document sent", the silent fortnights, the problem discovered late instead of early. Those add up to more delay than the legal work itself.
What speeds a sale up, in order of impact
- Launch at an evidence-based price — reductions cost more time than they save face.
- Instruct your solicitor and gather paperwork the day you list, not the day you accept an offer.
- Choose responsiveness: buyers, like everyone, drift towards whoever answers.
Sell the modern way.
Photography, floor plan and every major portal — all-inclusive from £200. Switching from another agent? First 200 switchers: £99 fixed.
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