Conveyancing Industry At Breaking Point – Summer To Be Biggest Challenge due to delays

Under normal circumstances, you can anticipate the conveyancing process to take around 12 weeks but given the back-log of work that conveyancers are having to go through, the industry is experiencing major delays that are likely to stretch beyond the Stamp Duty Holiday deadline at the end of June.

While the Stamp Duty Holiday offers home buyers the chance to save thousands ahead of their move, the work required to make this happen is proving to be too much to handle with Scott Bozinis, CEO of InfoTrack, believing that the conveyancing industry in particular is heading towards breaking point.

The increased demand has resulted in a lot of the administrative duties suffering from severe delays; for example, mortgage applications that would typically take just over a week to process are now taking anywhere between three and six weeks. The conveyancing industry, as a whole, is believed to be at maximum capacity and struggling to keep it’s head above water.

Experts are predicting that although the conveyancing industry is already struggling to keep up with the demand of this market boom, this coming Summer is likely to be the most difficult period yet.

This bottleneck is not a new occurrence or a result of the Stamp Duty Holiday extension that was announced in March. In reality, this is something that can be traced back to when the property market shut down back in the spring of 2020. Conveyancing delays were predicted as early as July, with many industry experts recommending sellers get their property on the market before the end of September.

Fast forward a year and, as of May 2021, there are currently 628,000 sales currently in progress. The current trend, however, suggests that over half of these will not be completed by the Stamp Duty Holiday deadline in June. As reported by TwentyCI, of all sales agreed, 354,000 (or 56%) will NOT complete by the revised deadline at the end of June.

The delays are only going to increase as we inch closer to the deadline and Bozinis puts the onus on the conveyancing industry to improve overall efficiency. This may, of course, be easier said than done as making up the work on 354,000 house sales, is no easy feat.

We have written before about the ways to avoid delays in conveyancing, but with time being more sensitive than ever and efficiency being of paramount importance, sellers may need to look for alternative routes to get their house sales completed as soon as possible. We pride ourselves on our speed, ease and simplicity of service, and our guaranteed sale has helped hundreds of customers take the next step regardless of their situation or location.

Contact us as soon as possible to discuss your home sale with one of our dedicated property advisors and we can get your sale over the line thanks to our sell house fast home-buying service before the 30th June, letting you make the most of the Stamp Duty Holiday savings.