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Moving in the UK is slower than other major nations

The UK has the slowest home moving timeline among 12 global nations, research from Moverly has revealed.

It takes an average of 179 days to go from listing to completion in the UK, compared to just 53 in the USA.

Gemma Young, chief executive of Moverly, said: “It seems you have to move halfway around the world to access a decent home selling process.

“The Americans are showing the rest of the world up while the UK is making everyone else look very good! That’s not to say the US model is better, but it’s certainly much faster and we should be doing everything we can to speed up what has become a painfully sluggish journey here in the UK.

“Conveyancing is a definite culprit when it comes to delaying the selling process, and this is because too many of the legal processes that pave the way to exchange of contracts have remained unchanged for decades, if not longer.”

Other nations to have fast selling processes include UAE (70 days), New Zealand (72 days), Canada (90 days), and Australia (95 days).

Meanwhile relatively slow nations are Italy (159 days), Spain (152 days), Portugal (152 days), and Singapore (152 days), while Germany (137 days) and France (105 days) are in the middle.

Young added: “By simply streamlining and digitising many of the conveyancing processes, we have proven that the time to sell can be reduced from up to 70%, which means the UK is perfectly capable of matching the speed of the US market.

“As more and more agents and conveyancers adopt the tech solutions that are now widely available to them, we expect the UK’s performance to see radical improvement in a short period of time.”

 

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