Analysis by Novus Strategy of data from TwentyCi, found that the process has become even slower year on year, despite there being fewer transactions.

It says that HMRC recorded 79,880 transactions at the end of January 2026, a fall of 3% compared to 82,350 in 2025.

Despite this, the average time from offer acceptance to exchange rose by 3% year on year, from 131 days in 2025.

On top of this, homes are taking longer to sell.

The average time from a property being listed to being sold subject to contract (SSTC) has risen to 86 days, up from 82 days in 2019.

This means, in addition to the 135 days to exchange, the whole process now takes 221 days, or around seven months and two weeks.

Novus chief executive Claire Van der Zant says: “It’s disappointing to see that time to exchange is still rising, and this metric has been trending upwards for some time.

“It only confirms what we, and many others across the industry, have been saying for a long time, which is that the ecosystem remains too fragmented.

“All companies involved in the mortgage and residential sales market have faced increasing workload and regulatory obligations in recent years but technology has failed to keep pace.”

“There remains a huge amount of friction between these businesses when they need to coordinate and communicate with each other, in order to push a transaction forward.

“Data captured digitally in one organisation cannot easily be reused in the next, and what you end up with is a fragile digital journey even though individual solutions might be extremely powerful in isolation.

“This is precisely why the government saw the need for significant reform of the home buying and selling process in last year’s consultation, and why the recommendations cannot come soon enough.

“Progress has been made by brokers, lenders and conveyancers but largely in isolation.”

She is calling for more co-operation between industry stakeholders to solve technical problems and speed up the process.