One of the proposals from the government’s home buying and selling reform is to initiate upfront information. Some of our industry remain opposed, recoiling at the memories of the ill-fated HIPs. In the government’s Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, it surveyed various parties. Whilst 58% of respondents supported the inclusion of property searches and condition reports in upfront information, conveyancers were less convinced, with 28% for the proposal and 38% opposed.
Concerns around this issue in the roadmap survey were:
The last point is an interesting one in terms of searches. The six-month validity of searches presents a challenge for upfront information. With the average property transaction taking nearly seven months, there is a real risk that searches could expire before the sale completes.
The overall transaction time is made up of time to sell (from listing to SSTC) and time to exchange (from SSTC to exchange). Our latest analysis has found the average time to sell is 76 days, and the average time to exchange is 130 days. Combining both stats gives you the average length of time it takes to transact, and that figure currently stands at 206 days in total (over 29 weeks or nearly 7 months).
We wanted to explore how many transactions this could potentially impact. The following table provides the percentage of exchanges each year that took longer than six months between listing a property and exchanging.
In 2019, 36.1% of properties exceeded the six-month mark between instruction and exchange, a notable proportion in itself. However, by 2026, this has increased dramatically, with a staggering 60.8% of properties now taking longer than six months to progress through the journey. Based on current market conditions, for 60.8% of property transactions their searches would have expired during the process, requiring them to be refreshed to satisfy lender requirements.
In the current market, many search companies will refresh searches free of charge. However, the number of cases where searches expire is currently less common because they are typically only ordered once a conveyancer is instructed, usually around the SSTC stage, (much later in the transaction journey). As a result, as the process stands today, there is far less risk of searches becoming outdated before exchange.
The question is, in this new upfront information world, are search companies likely to refresh searches when nearly two-thirds expire? What’s more, how long will refreshed searches take? Usually, these are expedited, but again, this doesn’t seem to be achievable when dealing with such large volumes. Any delays compromise the whole premise of the reform - to speed up transactions!
The upfront information proposals push housing transactions from buyer-led to front-end seller-led. This will cause a significant change to property law as it moves risk assessment from the middle of the transaction to the beginning. Currently, the cost of searches sits with the buyer. Should searches be required prior to listing, this responsibility and the associated costs would transfer to the seller.
The government outlined in the roadmap that it will produce guidance ahead of legislation, including “how and when data such as search information needs refreshing and what is needed to support lender acceptance and buyer trust.” So, this remains very much in the air until further clarification is provided.
Many questions remain. Will buyers and conveyancers rely on searches that were commissioned months earlier by the seller? Will lenders have to start accepting searches that are more than six months old? Will sellers have to pay for secondary searches, and if so, who checks these?
Hopefully, the answers to these questions will be clarified. The government intends to reach out to the industry in order to shape the sales packs and what will be needed for the property searches and condition reports, so all of these queries should be ironed out in the months to come.
We eagerly await an update on how the government intends to proceed with initiating upfront information. It will certainly represent a significant shake-up for the industry, with conveyancers potentially being instructed at the point of listing rather than once a property is SSTC. This would allow legal work to begin earlier, identifying and resolving issues before they become obstacles to completion, helping to reduce chain breaks and fall throughs.
More importantly, it would fundamentally change the role of the conveyancer. Rather than being viewed as an outlier or a middleman - and often unfairly perceived as a blocker to progression - conveyancers would become a key player from the outset. This earlier involvement could help improve the industry’s reputation among consumers.
The rationale for introducing upfront information is strong, with the potential to address many of the inefficiencies within the current process. Currently, 23.4% of all concluded listings in 2026 experienced one fall through, and although this figure is dropping from a high in 2023, at nearly one in four properties, it is still a significant problem for everyone involved in the home buying and selling process. Providing the buyer with all the information they need before they put in an offer makes sense, so nothing comes to light later down the line that will cause them to pull out of the offer.
Evidently, more thought is needed around the expiration of searches. This will need to be legislated for in some way. We’ll see how it all plays out in the coming months.
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