By the Location Location team – independent in Hackney for 20 years, and currently ranked the UK’s Best Overall Sales Agency. Published August 2026.
Quick answer: The average time to buy a home in England has stretched to around seven months, up from 5.5 months in 2019, and 60.8% of sales now take longer than six months – long enough that standard property searches expire mid-transaction. The good news is that the slowdown isn’t in finding a buyer (that stage has stayed flat at 2.5 months since 2019); it’s everything that happens afterwards, especially getting to exchange, which has jumped from 3 months to 4.5. Our advice for anyone stuck on the “sell first or buy first” question: pick your agent early (get at least three valuations), prepare your marketing in advance, and start viewing properties in parallel – so you’re ready to launch the moment you find the one, and proceedable the moment you need to be.
In our last piece, “Why Nearly Half of UK Homes Never Sell,” we went after the industry’s favourite dirty secret: agents who inflate valuations to win the listing, then leave sellers to discover the truth the hard way. Today we’re picking up a different thread from the same tangle – one that’s just as maddening and, for anyone trying to move house right now, considerably more personal: how long the whole thing takes, and the ancient dilemma of whether to sell first or buy first.
Consider it property’s version of the chicken and the egg. You can’t buy without selling, because you need the money and the mortgage lender wants to see it. You can’t sell with total confidence, because you don’t know where you’re going next, or whether you’ll find it in time. Everyone selling and buying at once – which, let’s be honest, is most people – ends up standing in this exact spot at some point. So let’s solve it, rather than just sympathising about it over coffee.
The bit nobody tells you: it’s not the selling that’s slow anymore
New data this week from TwentyEA, reported by The Negotiator, gives the whole conversation a rather bracing update. Across England, 60.8% of property transactions in 2026 are now taking longer than six months from start to finish – more than double the 36% recorded back in 2019. The average time to buy a home has stretched to roughly seven months, up from five and a half. Six in ten sales, in other words, are now at genuine risk of running into a very specific, very unglamorous problem: the property searches (local authority, environmental, drainage and water) that your solicitor orders near the start of a purchase are typically only valid for six months. Run past that, and they simply expire – meaning someone has to pay to redo them, right in the middle of an already stressful process, at exactly the point buyers and sellers are least in the mood for a surprise bill.
Here’s the interesting part, and it’s one that lines up almost exactly with what we told you last time. The time it takes to find a buyer – from listing a property to getting a sale agreed – has barely moved. It’s sitting at 2.5 months, same as 2019. The delay isn’t in the marketing. It’s in everything that happens once a buyer’s found: the time to reach exchange of contracts has jumped from 3 months in 2019 to 4.5 months now. That’s the exact bottleneck we flagged last time, when we showed that getting an offer agreed is only half the journey, and that a meaningful chunk of sales collapse or drag on between “sold subject to contract” and exchange. This new data confirms it from a completely different angle: the legal and administrative machinery behind a sale, not the finding of a buyer, is where 2026 is losing all its time.
There’s a supply-and-demand wrinkle worth a mention too. More homes came onto the market this year – up 2.4% annually to 1,109,403 – while the number of buyers actively looking fell 5.1% to 736,108. More stock, fewer active buyers, means more competition among sellers and pickier, slower-moving buyers on the other side of every transaction. Flat sales are down 9.1% year on year, semi-detached down 4.6%, detached down 4.3%. None of this is an accident, and none of it is going away by itself.
To its credit, the government has noticed. Its housing reform plans include an ambition to cut the property fall-through rate from roughly 1 in 3 to 1 in 7, partly by requiring sellers and agents to provide full sales packs – the searches and legal information a buyer’s solicitor needs – at the point of listing, rather than weeks into a sale. Nick Huntley, TwentyEA’s director, put it plainly: “These sales packs will need to be provided by sellers and estate agents at the point of listing.” Sensible stuff, and if it happens, it should meaningfully cut the number of sales that stall for want of a piece of paper someone forgot to order.
Here’s the thing we can’t resist pointing out: that reform is still an ambition, not yet law, and even its target – a 1 in 7 fall-through rate, around 14% – is a number we’re already beating today. Our own abortive rate, which we shared in our last piece, sits at roughly 12%. Reform is welcome. But you shouldn’t have to wait for legislation to get a sale that actually reaches exchange.
The chicken and egg: do you sell first, or buy first?
Right, the question you actually came here for. This comes up in almost every conversation we have with someone upsizing, downsizing, or otherwise trying to move within the same breath they’re trying to sell. There are two instincts, and both are reasonable, and both have a genuine flaw.
Sell first, then buy. You get your home on the market, agree a sale, and now you’re “proceedable” – the industry’s slightly clinical term for a buyer who isn’t waiting on anything else to happen before they can complete. Proceedable buyers are catnip to sellers and agents alike, because they remove the two biggest sources of anxiety in any transaction: how long will this take, and will the money actually turn up. Sell first, and you’re instantly more competitive against chain-free buyers when you do find somewhere you love.
The flaw: if it takes you a while to find your next home – and with 60.8% of transactions now running past six months, “a while” is an increasingly realistic prospect – you risk losing the buyer you agreed a sale with while you’re still searching. And if that happens and you have to remarket, here’s the part that stings. Your original listing date doesn’t disappear. When the property reappears on the portals, often months later, buyers see it’s been on the market before and quietly assume something must be wrong with it – even though, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the sale simply fell through for reasons that had nothing to do with the property itself. We covered exactly this psychology in our last piece: a stale listing works against itself, and a relaunch after a lengthy false start typically achieves less than a clean launch would have the first time round.
Buy first, then sell. You get to search with a completely open mind, view as many homes as you like, and never feel the pressure of a ticking clock on your own sale. The flaw: without a live sale of your own, you’re not proceedable either, and you’ll frequently find yourself up against buyers who are – either because they’ve already sold, or because they’re chain-free altogether. Sellers understandably favour the safer bet. It’s frustrating to fall for a home and lose it to someone who was simply further along in a process you haven’t started yet.
Neither instinct is wrong. They’re just both incomplete on their own, which is exactly why “sell first or buy first” keeps getting asked as if it only has one right answer. It doesn’t. The actual answer is to do the groundwork for both, in parallel, before you commit to either.
Our approach: choose your agent first, then run both processes at once
Here’s what we tell every client wrestling with this, and it’s less a trick than a change in sequencing.
Start with valuations, not viewings. Get a minimum of three valuations before you do anything else, and ask each agent the same question we pushed hard in our last piece: how did you arrive at this number, and what’s your evidence? While you’re at it, ask for both a best-case and a worst-case timeline for your specific property, in today’s market – not a generic “eight to twelve weeks” that every agent gives every seller regardless of the home in question. You need a realistic picture of what you’re likely to achieve and how long it’s likely to take before you can make any sensible decision about sequencing your move.
Prepare your marketing before you need it. This is the part most sellers – and, frankly, most agents – never think to offer. We call it back-burner marketing: while you’re weighing up valuations and starting to look at what’s out there, we get everything ready in the background. Professional photography, floor plans, and (depending on the package) a full video property tour – all shot and finished, sitting ready to go, before you’ve decided on a single next step. The moment you’re ready to move, whether that’s the day you find your dream home or simply the day you decide to commit, your listing launches instantly. No week lost waiting for a photographer’s diary to free up. No lag between the decision and the listing going live – which matters enormously, because that gap is exactly when momentum, and sometimes buyers, get lost.
Search in parallel, not in sequence. With valuations done and marketing prepared, there’s no reason to wait to start viewing. Go and see what’s out there – what’s available, where, and what it costs at today’s prices – while your own sale groundwork sits ready in the background. By the time you find the one, you’re not starting from scratch on either side of the transaction. You’re simply pressing go.
Why the “nearly there” seller usually beats the chain-free buyer
This is the part that decides who gets the house. Sellers and their agents aren’t just weighing price when they choose between offers – they’re weighing certainty. An unproceedable buyer represents three separate unknowns: how long will it take them to sell, what will they actually achieve, and will the sums still work once they have. That’s a lot of uncertainty to ask a seller to hold, and it’s precisely why a chain-free or already-proceedable buyer so often wins the home, even against a higher offer from someone still marketing their own property.
The good news is that “nearly there” is a real, credible position – not just something you tell yourself to feel better. With your marketing prepared and your valuation evidence solid, you can say to a seller’s agent: my home is ready to launch this week, priced on hard local evidence, with an agent who has a 12% abortive rate against a national average of 23.7%. That’s not nothing. And we don’t just say it and leave it there – we pick up the phone. Where our clients are negotiating on an onward purchase, we speak directly to the seller’s agent, walk them through our marketing, our pricing strategy, and our track record, and give them genuine confidence in our client’s position. More often than our competitors, we’re able to get our own client’s sale to best and final offers at the exact moment they need that leverage most – while they’re still negotiating on the place they want to buy.
The bottom line
“Sell first or buy first” is the wrong question, because it assumes you have to choose. You don’t. Get your valuations, get your evidence-based price, get your marketing prepared, and start looking – all before you’ve committed to a single step in either direction. Then, when the right home turns up, you’re not choosing between being ready to sell and being ready to buy. You’re both, on the same day.
We’ve been doing this in Hackney for twenty years now – independent the whole way through, which is a milestone we’re rather proud of and don’t get to mention nearly often enough. It’s also, we’d argue, exactly why we know the difference between advice that sounds sensible and advice that gets people through to exchange. So: are all agents the same? Absolutely not. Some will tell you to just “get it on the market and see what happens.” We’d rather you went in with a plan.
If you’re weighing up your own next move – whether that’s selling, buying, or working out which one to do first – we’re always happy to talk it through.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to sell a house in the UK in 2026?
Getting from listing to an agreed sale takes around 2.5 months on average, largely unchanged since 2019. The real slowdown is afterwards: reaching exchange of contracts now takes around 4.5 months on average, up from 3 months in 2019, and the average total time to buy a home has risen to roughly 7 months, up from 5.5 (TwentyEA data via The Negotiator, August 2026).
Why do property searches expire during a house sale?
Standard property searches (local authority, environmental, drainage and water) are typically valid for six months. TwentyEA data shows 60.8% of UK property transactions in 2026 are now taking longer than six months to complete, up from 36% in 2019 – meaning a majority of sales are now at real risk of searches expiring and needing (and paying for) a costly, time-consuming repeat.
Should I sell my house before I start looking to buy?
Not exclusively, and not in strict sequence. Get at least three valuations first, prepare your marketing in advance, and start viewing properties in parallel. This lets you launch your own sale the moment you’re ready, so you can present as a proceedable buyer without having sacrificed the time you needed to find the right next home.
What does “proceedable” mean in the UK property market?
A proceedable buyer is one who isn’t waiting on anything else – typically because they’ve already sold, are chain-free, or have secured mortgage finance – and can move to exchange without depending on a separate transaction completing first. Sellers and agents strongly favour proceedable buyers because they remove the uncertainty around timing and price that comes with an unsold onward chain.
Is the government planning to fix the UK’s long fall-through and completion times?
Yes. Reform plans reported in August 2026 aim to cut the property fall-through rate from roughly 1 in 3 to 1 in 7, partly by requiring sellers and agents to supply full sales packs – including searches – at the point of listing rather than partway through a sale. It’s a sensible plan, though still ahead of us rather than law today; Location Location’s own abortive rate already sits at around 12%, below the government’s 1-in-7 (roughly 14%) target.
What is “back-burner” marketing?
It’s our term for preparing a property’s full marketing package – photography, floor plans, and video tours – in advance of a seller committing to launch, so that when they’re ready (often the moment they find their own next home), the listing can go live immediately rather than waiting weeks for marketing to be produced from scratch.
Sources: TwentyEA data via The Negotiator (20 August 2026); TwentyCi fall-through data via Property Industry Eye (Q1 2026); Location Location internal sales data. This article follows on from our previous piece, “Why Nearly Half of UK Homes Never Sell.”
