The property market’s biggest challenge: Getting sales to completion

The property market continues to operate against a challenging backdrop. Transaction volumes are down and TwentyEA is forecasting around 1.16 million transactions this year, 4.4% below 2025, while sales agreed are also down 5.8% year-on-year.

Whilst lower levels of demand are a contributing factor to fewer transactions, they’re only part of the problem. There is another challenge embedded in pipelines across the country: the fact that it is taking far too long to turn an agreed sale into a completed transaction.

Rightmove data puts the period from sale agreed to completion at 154 days on average – more than five months. TwentyEA, meanwhile, reports that 60.8% of exchanges now take more than six months from instruction, compared with just 36.1% in 2019. Furthermore, around 23% of sales agreed are still falling through. As we all know, that has a direct commercial impact on estate agencies.

However, that doesn’t have to be the norm. At Complete ASAP, our average transaction time is just over 100 days and sales complete up to eight weeks faster than the industry average. Our average fall-through rate is also just 9%. Commercially, these stats make a real difference.

Focus on the cashflow

Perhaps the question for agents isn’t simply how to generate more instructions and agree more sales. It’s how to convert existing sales into revenue, and how to do it faster.

After all, considerable time, effort and money goes into winning an instruction and securing a sale. Once that business is in the pipeline, protecting it through to completion should be every bit as important as winning the next instruction. An agreed sale isn’t revenue until it completes.

For those transactions taking progressively longer to complete – and almost a quarter not completing at all – there are significant implications for cash flow and forecasting. There is also a hidden cost. The longer a transaction remains open, the longer somebody has to manage it – from answering calls to resolving potential problems.

What does good sales progression look like in the current climate?

There are several areas I believe agents should be concentrating on.

+ Start progressing the sale immediately

Some of the biggest delays originate at the beginning of a transaction. Searches, documentation, identification, source-of-funds information and other requirements should be addressed as early as possible. Upfront information has an important role to play here.

+ Understand the entire chain

A transaction cannot be progressed effectively in isolation. The issue preventing your vendor from moving may sit several transactions further down the chain. Good sales progression means understanding every link.

+ Make every interaction purposeful

More communication doesn’t automatically mean better progression – every interaction should have an objective, and be determining what needs to happen next.

+ Get to grips with enquiries

Despite the industry’s focus on digitisation and better property data, enquiries continue to be a major source of delay. For example, information may be sitting with other third parties or historical documentation can often be incomplete. Technology can help organise information and automate repetitive processes, but it cannot resolve every exception. Often it takes real human experience to understand the problem, and to identify who needs to act and keep the transaction moving.

+ Use technology to give people more time to progress

AI and automation are increasingly useful in sales progression, but their greatest value shouldn’t be measured by how many people they can replace. Used effectively, technology can remove repetitive administration and help support wider business growth.

+ Measure what is actually happening

Every agency should know its average transaction time and fall-through rate, but the real value comes from understanding where and why delays occur.

Identify where transactions stall, which issues repeatedly cause hold-ups and at what stage sales are most likely to fall through. Tracking these patterns makes it easier to spot avoidable delays and intervene earlier.

There is no doubt that generating new instructions remains fundamental to agency growth. But in a market where transaction volumes and completions are under pressure, there is an equally strong argument for focusing on the business you’ve already won.

Agents invest considerable resources getting a property onto their books, finding a buyer and agreeing a sale. The commercial value of that work is only realised when the transaction completes and the fee is paid.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply how many more properties can we sell? It’s how many of the instructions we’ve already secured can we get to completion at a faster rate – and how quickly can we turn them into revenue?

Katy Billany is sales director at ASAP.