How Long Does It Really Take From Offer to Exchange in the UK?

6 min read

Longer than most vendors and buyers expect, and it's been getting longer. As of April 2026, the average time from offer accepted to exchange of contracts passed 104 days according to Connells Group's research: over three months before contracts are even exchanged, let alone completion.

Where the time actually goes

The legal process itself (searches, enquiries, contract review) doesn't take 104 days if a solicitor works on it without interruption. The delay is almost never one big blocker. It's a series of small waits stacking up: an enquiry raised and not answered for a week, a search that sat in a queue, a mortgage valuation booked but not chased, a chain of five transactions where one link is always the slowest and nobody's tracking which one that is this week.

Why the average keeps climbing

A few structural pressures are pushing timelines out further than they used to be: local authority search turnaround has lengthened in many areas, conveyancing firms are handling higher caseloads per fee-earner, and longer chains (more transactions linked together) mean more places for a delay to originate. An individual agency can't fix any of that on its own. It can still get to exchange faster than the average, though, by managing its chains actively rather than waiting for solicitors to report progress.

What "actively managing" actually looks like

• Chasing every party in the chain on a schedule, not just when a vendor calls asking for an update
• Tracking key dates, from mortgage offer expiry to search validity to survey booking, against the realistic timeline of the whole chain rather than just your own transaction
• Having full visibility of every linked sale, so a delay three links away is caught before it becomes your problem too
• Keeping every party informed proactively, so silence doesn't get mistaken for a lack of progress