Once you have accepted an offer, the legal work on a house sale in England takes around four to six months on average to reach completion. The government's June 2026 reform roadmap puts the average at around 120 days from offer accepted to completion, and Rightmove's figures published in August 2026 put it at 154 days across Great Britain and 171 days in the East of England, which includes Cambridge. Finding a buyer comes first and adds roughly two months on average.
No solicitor can promise a fixed timescale, because a sale moves at the pace of its slowest part: searches, a mortgage offer, information from a freeholder, or another sale further up or down the chain. This guide explains what the published figures actually measure, what happens at each stage, what causes most delays and what sellers and buyers can do to keep things moving.
Different sources measure different things, which is why you will see different numbers quoted:
Two other findings from the Rightmove data are worth knowing. Flats took longest to complete, at 169 days on average compared with 149 days for terraced and semi-detached houses. And completing a move took 36 days longer than in 2019, a 31% increase.
Scotland is quicker partly because its system is different, with Home Reports and more information provided upfront. The rest of this guide covers England, where Redmayne Arnold & Harris works.
An offer on a home in England is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged, so most of the time between offer and completion is spent getting both sides to the point where they are ready to commit. For a fuller walk-through, see our guide to the stages of conveyancing. In outline:
Your estate agent, your solicitor or conveyancer and any mortgage lender will each need to check your identity, so sellers and buyers often provide the same documents more than once. The government's reform consultation acknowledged this, noting that anti-money laundering rules mean consumers face duplicated checks from several professionals in a single transaction.
The seller's solicitor checks the title held at HM Land Registry and drafts the contract. The seller completes the Law Society's TA6 Property Information Form and TA10 Fittings and Contents Form, plus the TA7 Leasehold Information Form for a leasehold property. The contract records the price, boundaries, what is included, rights and restrictions, services and when the sale will complete.
Once the offer is accepted, the buyer's solicitor orders searches, usually a local authority search, a water and drainage search and an environmental search. In Cambridge, official local searches for both Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire are handled by Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, which says it will reply within 10 working days.
The buyer's solicitor raises questions about the title, the searches, the property and the transaction, and the seller answers them with their solicitor's help. In parallel, the buyer's lender values the property before approving the mortgage, and the buyer may commission their own survey. If the survey finds a problem, the price can still be renegotiated because the offer is subject to contract.
When both sides are happy, they sign final copies of the contract and exchange them. At that point the sale is legally binding and usually neither side can pull out without paying compensation. The buyer pays a deposit on exchange, and the completion date is fixed in the contract. Citizens Advice describes exchange as typically taking place a few weeks before completion.
On completion day the buyer's solicitor sends the money, the seller's solicitor pays off the mortgage, any estate agent fees and their own fee, the seller moves out and the buyer gets the keys.
Rightmove's August 2026 analysis named chain length, searches and leasehold complexity as common causes of individual delays, and pointed to high conveyancer caseloads and a fragmented, manual process as a big driver of long completion times overall. In practice, these are the hold-ups we see most often.
If your buyer is selling, or you are buying another home, your sale is linked to those other transactions and a delay in any of them holds up yours. GOV.UK notes that being in a chain makes the process take longer, and the government estimates that around one in three transactions fall through. Our article on property chains and how they can be broken looks at the options.
Searches are normally ordered only after the offer is accepted, so their turnaround is added straight onto the timeline. The government's consultation reported that in one project run by the search provider Landmark, transactions where searches were ordered early were on average four weeks faster, according to Landmark.
Selling a leasehold flat or house means getting information such as service charges and ground rent from the freeholder or managing agent. The government's June 2026 roadmap says leaseholders "can face delays and high costs when selling their homes" because this information is held by freeholders or managing agents who often take too long or charge too much. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 gives the government powers to cap fees and response times, but the roadmap says it still has to consult on and then make the secondary legislation that will set them. Until those rules are in place, leasehold sellers should request this information as soon as they decide to sell.
Sales stall when a seller cannot produce planning permissions, building regulations certificates, FENSA or CERTASS certificates for windows, guarantees, electrical certificates or party wall agreements. If you have owned your home since before 1990 and have not mortgaged it since, it might not be registered at HM Land Registry at all, which makes your paper title deeds essential. See our checklist of documents needed to sell a home.
Issues such as damp, unapproved alterations, flood risk or service charges often come to light only after an offer has been accepted, when they are hardest to resolve. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, estate agents must not omit material information that a buyer needs, or give it in an unclear or untimely way. Disclosing what you know at the start protects you and avoids renegotiation late in the process.
The buyer's lender values the property before approving the mortgage. If that valuation comes in below the agreed price, or the buyer's survey finds defects, the price or the mortgage may need to be renegotiated before the sale can continue.
If your sale is already running late, our guide to what happens if conveyancing is delayed explains the options for buyers and sellers.
The legal process is only part of the picture. Rightmove's figures show an average of 62 days to find a buyer across Great Britain and 66 days in the East of England, before any solicitor starts work. Getting the asking price right from the start, presenting the home well and having complete information ready all help to shorten that first stage and give your buyer fewer reasons to hesitate later. If you are thinking about selling, an accurate market valuation of your home is the right place to start.
None of the official sources we checked publishes a fastest possible time, and any quoted figure depends on the individual sale. For context, the quickest local authority area outside Scotland in Rightmove's August 2026 data, North East Derbyshire, still averaged 120 days from sale agreed to completion. What you can do is remove the usual causes of delay: no chain on either side if possible, a buyer whose finance is already arranged, a seller whose paperwork and forms are ready before the property is listed, and searches ordered straight away.
The HM Land Registry record is updated after completion, not as part of it, and the wait for registration does not hold up your move. After completion, a Stamp Duty Land Tax return must be sent and any tax paid to HMRC within 14 days (your solicitor usually does this on completion day), and the purchase must be registered with HM Land Registry.
HM Land Registry's published processing times (updated 22 September 2026, using July 2026 data) show that 41.6% of changes to existing registered titles are completed within a day. For applications that take longer, such as transferring a property title, HM Land Registry says over half take around 13 weeks, most are completed in about six months and some take about 10 months. Registering a property for the first time or a new lease can take considerably longer. HM Land Registry is clear that "legal ownership rights are secured from the moment the application is received", provided the application is in order. If a registration delay puts a further sale at risk, an expedite can be requested free of charge. Our article on when you legally own a house explains the difference between exchange, completion and registration.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Speak to a solicitor or licensed conveyancer about your own circumstances.
From an accepted offer to completion, the government's figure, repeated in its June 2026 roadmap and based on 2025 Landmark research, is around 120 days on average, and Rightmove's August 2026 data put it at 154 days across Great Britain and 171 days in the East of England. Long chains and leasehold sales are common causes of delay, and flats took longest of all property types.
Most of the time between offer and completion is spent reaching exchange, because searches, enquiries, surveys and the mortgage offer all have to be finished first. Citizens Advice describes exchange as typically happening a few weeks before completion, and the exact gap is agreed between the parties.
The most common causes are a slow link in the chain, searches, leasehold management information, missing documents, mortgage or survey issues and busy conveyancers. Ask your solicitor exactly what is outstanding and who is waiting for what.
There is no published official figure for the fastest possible sale. Even the quickest area outside Scotland averaged 120 days from sale agreed to completion in Rightmove's August 2026 data, so a sale in a few weeks would need everything to be ready on both sides: no chain, finance arranged, paperwork prepared and searches back quickly.
GOV.UK treats completion as the point you own the property, and HM Land Registry says legal ownership rights are secured from the moment it receives the registration application, provided it is in order. Registration itself can take weeks or months afterwards but does not delay your move.
