Selling a house takes around seven months on average from listing to completion. Rightmove’s House Price Index, published on 21 September 2026, puts it at an average of 64 days to find a buyer and a further 150 days to complete the sale. Rightmove is a property portal with a commercial interest in the market it measures, and its figures come from homes advertised on its own site.
On those averages, a home listed this autumn would complete after Easter 2027.
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In short
- Rightmove’s average is 64 days to find a buyer, then 150 days to complete, about seven months in total.
- The government puts the time from offer accepted to completion at around 120 days, and says about one in three transactions fall through.
- On Rightmove’s figures, 61% of homes that come to market find a buyer, down from 74% in 2021.
- Reforms to speed sales up need legislation that the government has not yet scheduled, so this autumn’s sellers work under the current system.
Seven months from listing to keys
The average splits into two very different stages. The first is marketing: getting viewings and agreeing a sale, which Rightmove puts at 64 days. The second is the legal work after the offer, which is where most of the time goes.
Rightmove says a further 150 days to complete. The government’s own figure is shorter.
Its home buying and selling reform roadmap, published in June 2026, says that once an offer is accepted it takes around 120 days on average to complete, and that the journey is now around 60% longer than it was in 2007. The two come from different data, so the fair reading is four to five months after a buyer is found, not a single number.
Applied to a home listed on 21 September 2026, the day Rightmove published, its averages give this:
| Stage, if listed on 21 September 2026 | Average time | Reached around |
|---|---|---|
| Find a buyer and agree a sale | 64 days | 24 November 2026 |
| Complete the sale | 150 more days | 23 April 2027 |
These are averages, and Rightmove itself notes that many moves beat them. They also only count the homes that sell. The rest of this guide is about which side of the average your sale lands on.
Why sales take this long and fall through
After a sale is agreed, the buyer’s solicitor has to check the title, run searches with the council and others, raise enquiries about the property, and wait for the buyer’s mortgage offer. Only then do both sides exchange contracts in England. The government’s roadmap notes that, under the system it is reforming, either party can withdraw at any point before exchange, largely without consequence. Scotland works differently, as the section below explains.
That is why sales fail late. The government’s roadmap says around one in three transactions fall through, and puts the cost of fall-throughs to consumers at around £400 million a year. Each failed sale sends the seller back to the start of the first stage, so a single fall-through can add months.
The most common delays come from three places:
- The chain. If your buyer is selling too, your completion date depends on their sale, and on every sale below it.
- Missing paperwork. Title documents, planning and building control records, guarantees and, for a flat, the leasehold management pack all take time to gather once a buyer’s solicitor asks.
- Price. A house priced too high can sit unsold through the first stage and need a reduction later.
No date has been set for reform. The roadmap says the government will legislate for sales packs before listing, and for binding conditional contracts, “when parliamentary time allows”, with binding contracts brought in only once sales packs are embedded. Its stated aim is a reformed system by the end of this Parliament.
Until then the government plans to work with industry on information sellers can provide voluntarily and to promote voluntary reservation agreements. A seller listing this autumn gets no statutory help with speed.
How to take weeks off the timeline
The asking price is the lever a seller controls most directly. Rightmove’s September figures show that 61% of homes that come to market find a buyer, against 74% in 2021. Rightmove also found that 74% of the homes sold so far in 2026 were priced right first time and needed no reduction.
Homes for sale are at a 12-year high for the time of year, while sales agreed are 9% lower than a year ago, so buyers have choice and use it.
Where you are matters too. Rightmove found that 91% of homes in Scotland find a buyer, 71% in the North West of England, 56% in the South East and only 42% in London. Rightmove links London’s low figure to stretched affordability and a larger mismatch between supply and demand.
The legal stage can be shortened too, mostly by doing the buyer’s solicitor’s waiting for them:
- Instruct a solicitor before you list. They can check your title and prepare the contract pack while the house is being marketed.
- Gather the paperwork now. Certificates, guarantees, planning records and, for a flat, the management pack. The government wants searches and a property condition report ready before listing in future. A seller can order them now, although respondents to the government’s consultation warned that lenders may not accept the data, or buyers may not trust it.
- Price against sold prices, not asking prices. Our guide on why a house is not selling sets out how to test an asking price.
- Weigh the buyer, not just the offer. A buyer with no home to sell and funding in place is one fewer link that can break.
If speed matters more than the last few per cent of price, there are other routes. We have compared selling at auction and what house buying companies offer, including what each costs you. A traditional auction binds both sides when the hammer falls, which is why it is quicker.
A let property can also sell with the tenant in place to an investor, which we cover in selling a house with tenants.
How selling in Scotland differs
Scotland has its own system, and the roadmap’s reforms are not expected to apply there.
In most cases, a Scottish seller must get a Home Report before marketing the home, made up of a property questionnaire, a single survey and an energy report, according to the Scottish Government’s mygov.scot guidance. A few property types are exempt, including new houses sold off-plan or to the first occupier. A seller who fails to provide a Home Report within 9 days of a potential buyer asking can be fined £500.
Once an offer is accepted, the two solicitors exchange letters called missives, and when a concluding missive is written it becomes a binding contract between seller and buyer, according to the mygov.scot guidance on missives.
That upfront information is similar to the sales packs the UK government plans to require for the rest of the UK. Rightmove puts Scotland’s 91% partly down to its greatly different buying and selling laws and practices.
What this means if you need to sell soon
Plan on seven months, not seven weeks. If you need to move by a date, count back from it: allow four to five months after a buyer is found, add the time it takes to find one in your area, and list with that much room.
Price the house to sell in the first few weeks rather than reducing it later. Have your solicitor and paperwork ready before the first viewing, so the legal stage starts the day you accept an offer.
The first step is knowing what your property is worth to the buyers who are actually in the market now. Get a free desktop valuation, evidence-backed and yours whether you sell or not. We introduce sellers to investor buyers, and if yours is a let or investment property you can also see the kind of stock our buyers are taking.