Six weeks ago, everyone seemed keen. The offer was accepted quickly, the solicitors were instructed within days, and there was talk of moving before half term. Now the updates have turned vague — “still waiting on searches”, “the buyer’s mortgage is being processed”, “we’re chasing the chain” — and it’s genuinely hard to tell whether this is normal conveyancing friction or a transaction that’s quietly stalling.
Six weeks on its own is not evidence that something has gone wrong. Propertymark reported in April 2026 that home movers were facing waits of up to 17 weeks between offer and exchange, with mortgage processing, conveyancing workloads, compliance requirements and chains all contributing to longer transactions. (Propertymark)
The more useful question is not how many weeks have passed, but whether anything identifiable is still moving. A vague delay could be perfectly ordinary or it could be the early sign of a buyer losing momentum, and the way to distinguish between the two is not simply to wait longer. It is to establish precisely where the hold-up sits, who can move it and what should happen next if the transaction is genuinely progressing.
This article principally covers ordinary residential sales in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have different conveyancing systems and should be considered under their own rules.
Find the specific blockage before deciding what to do about it
A transaction can slow down for a surprisingly wide range of reasons. The buyer’s mortgage lender may still be working towards a formal offer. A valuation or survey may have raised something that needs investigating. Local searches may be outstanding. A leasehold sale may be waiting for information from the freeholder or managing agent. The buyer’s conveyancer may have raised an enquiry that cannot yet be answered, or the buyer may be sitting in a chain where the genuine hold-up is two or three transactions away.
And sometimes the buyer is simply becoming less certain.
Those situations can all sound remarkably similar when reduced to “the solicitors are still working on it”, but they require very different responses. Ask your estate agent for a proper chain update rather than another general reassurance. The government’s home-selling guidance recommends establishing how long the chain is, whether every link has a buyer and where delays are occurring; where sales progression is part of the service, the agent and legal representatives should help build that picture.
At the same time, ask your own conveyancer what remains outstanding on your sale and whether they are waiting for anything from you or the buyer’s side. There is little value in putting pressure on a buyer over their mortgage if exchange is actually being held up because your managing agent has not returned the leasehold information pack.
A useful update should eventually become specific enough to look something like this:
| Possible blockage | What the seller can reasonably establish |
|---|---|
| Buyer’s mortgage | Whether the valuation has taken place, whether an offer has been issued and whether anything material is still preventing the mortgage from being ready |
| Searches | Whether they have been ordered, which searches have returned and what is still awaited |
| Conveyancing enquiries | Which substantive enquiries remain unresolved and whose response is needed |
| Leasehold information | Whether the management information has been ordered and received, and whether further questions remain |
| Buyer’s survey | Whether a survey has taken place and whether the buyer intends to raise an issue or renegotiate |
| Property chain | Where each transaction has reached and which particular link is preventing exchange |
The aim is not to demand the buyer’s confidential mortgage offer, survey or solicitor correspondence. A seller does not need those documents to establish whether meaningful progress is being made. What matters is credible confirmation of the stage reached and some idea of the next event that has to happen.
Once a delay has a name, it becomes much easier to judge.
Before exchange, the seller is managing uncertainty
For an ordinary sale in England and Wales, accepting an offer does not itself create the binding contract for the property. GOV.UK’s current guidance on offers and negotiations confirms that the transaction remains non-binding until contracts are exchanged.
That does not mean pulling out is cost-free. Sellers and buyers may already have spent money on conveyancing, surveys, mortgages or other arrangements, and separate agreements can occasionally create obligations of their own. But as far as the ordinary property sale is concerned, both sides can still decide not to proceed before exchange.
That is why a buyer who repeatedly stalls at this stage deserves attention. The risk is not simply that moving day will be later than hoped; it is that the transaction can still disappear altogether. There is also an important difference between somebody who is waiting and somebody who is not progressing. A buyer waiting ten days for an already-ordered search is in a very different position from one who, weeks after agreeing the purchase, has still not taken basic steps towards the mortgage or conveyancing.
The government’s own selling guidance identifies activity such as appointing a legal representative, arranging searches and allowing valuation or survey access as signs that a purchase is being progressed. Those milestones are more useful than whether an estate agent continues to report that the buyer “sounds keen”.
Until exchange actually happens, the proposed completion date should also be treated as a target rather than a certainty. Packing can begin and provisional arrangements may make sense, but sellers should be cautious about committing to non-refundable removals, temporary accommodation, contractors or other costs on the assumption that a suggested date cannot move. GOV.UK’s selling guidance places the firm organisation of the move after exchange, once the parties are legally committed. The closer a transaction gets to exchange, the more tempting it is to organise life around the expected date — and the more expensive a last-minute delay can become.
Apply pressure to the blockage, not simply to the calendar
Once the cause of the delay is reasonably clear, the seller has several ways to create momentum without turning every slow transaction into a confrontation.
Agreeing a realistic target for exchange can help, particularly where the agents and conveyancers understand what still has to happen first. Propertymark’s consumer guidance on speeding up a sale recommends agreeing a target exchange date because it gives the transaction structure and makes it easier to recognise when progress has genuinely slipped.
A target works best when it is attached to actual milestones. If the mortgage valuation has happened, the useful question is what remains before the mortgage is ready. If searches are due later in the week, the next update can focus on whether they arrived and whether they generated further enquiries. What rarely helps is an arbitrary ultimatum detached from the problem. “Exchange by Friday or we’re putting it back on the market” cannot make a local authority produce a search faster or force a lender to issue an offer, and used too early it can damage a sale that was always going to need another week.
That does not mean the seller should tolerate indefinite drift. If an agreed target passes with no credible explanation, no identifiable movement and no clear indication that the buyer still intends to proceed, asking the question directly through the agent or conveyancer is entirely reasonable: do they still want the property, and what specifically has to happen before they will exchange?
Sometimes the answer arrives in a different form: the buyer comes back after a survey, valuation or further inspection and asks for the price to be reduced. At that point the issue is no longer simply delay; it is a new negotiation. Ask the agent to establish what reduction is being sought and why, consider whatever supporting information is available, and decide whether accepting, countering or putting the property back on the market makes sense on the economics of the sale as they stand now. The fact that several months have already been spent on the transaction is frustrating, but time already lost should not by itself decide what price you accept.
It is worth checking your own side at the same time. Unanswered enquiries, missing guarantees or planning documents, an outstanding mortgage redemption issue or a management pack nobody realised had not been ordered can all make a seller appear to be waiting on the buyer when the blockage is actually elsewhere.
When does remarketing become reasonable?
Before exchange, a seller can reconsider whether keeping the property completely off the market still makes sense, but remarketing works better as a considered response to a transaction that no longer looks credible than as a threat designed to frighten a slow buyer.
Government guidance recommends taking a property off the market after accepting an offer as a signal of commitment, while also making clear that an accepted offer remains subject to contract until exchange. Estate agents must continue passing any new offers to their client up to exchange. If confidence in the existing buyer has genuinely deteriorated, the seller can therefore discuss renewed marketing with the agent while deciding whether the current transaction still deserves more time.
There are consequences. The existing buyer may regard remarketing as a loss of confidence and withdraw; people elsewhere in the chain may become nervous; and the replacement buyer who looks attractive today may offer less, bring another chain or need to begin the mortgage and legal process from the beginning. The choice is not between a slow buyer and an imaginary perfect replacement — it is between the transaction that exists and whatever the market can actually produce next.
A seller thinking of appointing another estate agent should also check the existing agency contract first. GOV.UK’s guidance on estate-agent agreements warns that sole-agency and sole-selling-rights arrangements can result in liability for more than one fee in some circumstances.
There is nevertheless a real difference between giving a credible buyer sufficient time to finish the work and allowing a transaction with no visible path to exchange to occupy the market indefinitely. The seller’s judgement is ultimately about which of those situations they are in.
After exchange, the problem changes completely
Exchange changes the nature of the problem because the sale contract has become binding. GOV.UK’s conveyancing guidance for sellers describes exchange as the point at which the agreement to buy and sell becomes legally enforceable and says that normally neither party can then withdraw without consequences.
If the buyer asks before the contractual completion date to move it, the seller can consider agreeing, but the date should not be altered through an informal arrangement between agents or the parties themselves. The seller may have an onward purchase, removal arrangements, temporary accommodation, mortgage costs or other commitments tied to the existing date, and any agreed variation should be handled properly through the conveyancers.
A buyer who simply fails to complete on the contractual date presents a different problem again. Many residential contracts incorporate the Law Society’s Standard Conditions of Sale, although individual contracts can amend those conditions. The standard framework provides a formal notice-to-complete procedure where one party is ready, able and willing to complete and the other has failed to do so. That process can make time of the essence and, if the default continues, potentially lead to termination of the contract, treatment of the deposit under the contractual terms, resale and claims for loss.
The precise rights depend on the actual signed contract and what has happened, which is why a missed completion after exchange should move immediately into the seller’s conveyancer’s hands rather than being treated as another sales-progression problem for the estate agent to negotiate informally. Before exchange, the seller is deciding whether this buyer is still likely to buy. After exchange, the question is what the binding contract now requires each side to do.
A slow buyer is not necessarily a bad buyer
The frustrating part of selling a home is that genuine delay and loss of commitment can look almost identical from the seller’s side. A cautious buyer waiting for a difficult title enquiry to be resolved may be more committed than somebody sending enthusiastic messages while doing very little, while a mortgage application that takes longer than expected can still end in an entirely straightforward completion. A slow chain can also move surprisingly quickly once one missing transaction catches up. What the seller needs, therefore, is information rather than optimism or suspicion.
Find the blockage, establish what has already happened and identify the next concrete event that should move the transaction forward. Give a credible delay the time it genuinely needs, but decide what you will do if the promised progress does not materialise. Before exchange that can eventually mean choosing between continuing with the current buyer and putting the property back in front of the market; after exchange it means allowing the conveyancer to deal with the contractual consequences.
What should not continue indefinitely in either situation is a month of “we’re chasing it” without anybody being able to explain what, exactly, is being chased.
Important: This article provides general information about residential property sales and is not legal, mortgage or financial advice for an individual transaction. Contract terms, chains and the consequences of delayed or failed completion vary between transactions and jurisdictions. If contracts have already been exchanged and completion is at risk, take advice from your own conveyancer immediately before agreeing changes or taking action against the buyer.
