As many as 83% of home sellers to have sold a property in the last year experienced at least one health issue related to stress, according to research by Moverly.
The protracted and uncertain period between accepting an offer and completing on a sale was the primary factor behind their stress-related health problems, the study found.
An increase in anxiety levels was by far the most prominent issue experienced, while being unable to sleep also ranked particularly high. Feelings of depression, headaches and a lack of memory or concentration were also among the top five most common stress-induced health issues experienced when selling a home.
While the majority of sellers only suffered from one of these ailments, 18% experienced two symptoms of stress, while 39% experienced three or more.
Some 7% even stated that they had to seek medical advice as a result, while 27% said they are still suffering from the health issues brought on from selling a home despite having now completed the process.
Ed Molyneux, Moverly co-founder, said: “It’s fair to say that despite a huge amount of digital disruption in recent years, the home-selling process is still stuck in the dark ages and it’s the nation’s homebuyers and sellers that are suffering as a result.
“Selling a property is an incredibly stressful experience and this is largely down to the time it takes between accepting an offer and completing on a sale, during which time a sale can be delayed or even collapse for a myriad of reasons.
“So it’s hardly surprising that given this prolonged period of uncertainty, many home sellers are suffering from stress-induced health issues as they hang in the balance hoping that they will be able to move home as planned.”
Hardly surprising.
Talk to professional movers and all will talk of customers crying on the phone (literally). I’ve long since lost count of the number of distressed conversations I alone have had.
While we continue to have self-centred and self-serving practices and procedures by EA’s and Conveyancers it won’t improve.
Until there’s a major rethink on training for those involved it will not get better.
Conveyancing and/or Estate Agency isn’t broken. It never has been. It’s the implementation of it that’s the issue.
Training needs to be focussed on data points clients can rely on and use as emotional crutches. Empathy needs to be taught on the process from the clients perspective.
A complete re-think is required on the part of conveyancing for how clients expectations are managed, massaged and handled.
As home movers up and down the country are all too aware, this process, as it currently is is grotesquely stressful for the paymasters. Badly organised, almost sociopathically implemented and leads to hundreds of thousands of households every year finding that something that should be wonderfully enjoyable is miserable and stressful.
There are only two actors causing this. Conveyancers and Estate Agency employees.
It’s isn’t possible to point the finger elsewhere. They’re the ones dealing with the poor folk trying to execute an event that they went into with joy, yet arrive at dishevelled and distressed.
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