Conveyancers optimistic about property market but see little progress in speeding up the process

Over a half of conveyancers (55%) are confident in the current stability of the property market, but report little sign of the process speeding up.

The results form part of a new quarterly Confidence Tracker launched by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) to gauge the views of the profession on the current state of home buying and selling market.

A third of conveyancers were neutral in their response regarding current market stability and just 12% reported a lack of confidence.

Most transactions (84%) are taking either three or four months to complete from acceptance of an offer to completion.

Just 17% of respondents report seeing improvements in the conveyancing process, indicating that industry wide efforts to reap the benefits of new processes and IT need to be redoubled.

Conveyancers report little convergence amongst buyers and sellers in their confidence levels, with less than a third of buyers (29%) and sellers (28%) showing any positivity about current property market conditions.

The Confidence Tracker was launched by the CLC to track the views of the profession on the current state of home buying and selling. The tracker will become a regular temperature check of those working in conveyancing, monitoring the sentiment and expectations of conveyancers to provide an insight into the health of the industry.

The CLC’s head of strategy and external relations, Stephen Ward, says:

“It’s good to see that confidence levels are high. But 2025 holds a lot in store for the property market. Next month’s stamp duty land tax (SDLT) changes will undoubtedly have an impact. We also expect to see interest rates continue to gradually trend downwards.

“The introduction of material information aims to improve transparency and reduce delays caused by unexpected revelations late in the transaction and it should really start to have an impact in 2025. It will be valuable to see how all of this is reflected in the future editions of this survey, especially with the government’s recent commitment to working with the industry to reform the property transfer process.”

Kindly shared by CLCUK

Picture courtesy of Adobe