108 days - the longest average time for a home to go under offer

A new league table showing how long it takes homes to sell on average in different postcodes across England and Wales suggests the slowest area is west London where properties typically take 108 days to go under offer.

By contrast the fastest areas - Northampton, Coventry and Manchester - take a typical 36 days, while the whole-of-Britain average is 61 days.

The data comes from the consumer group HomeOwners Alliance which has compiled the league table from monitoring how long thousands of houses and flats were listed on property websites before being marked as “under offer”.

Seven of the 10 postcode areas where homes are changing hands most quickly are in the Midlands. These hotspots include Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Wolverhampton, Luton and Stevenage.

The analysis provides further evidence of a slowdown in the London property market, with four of the 10 postcodes areas with the slowest sales either in or close to the capital. Three others in this slower group are in the North East - specifically, Durham, Middlesbrough and Sunderland.

The 10 fastest ‘under offer’ postcodes were:

- Northampton (average 30.6 days)

- Coventry (31.3) 

- Manchester (36.0)

- Swindon (36.4)

- Birmingham (36.7)

- Bristol (37.8)

- Milton Keynes (39.3)

- Wolverhampton (40.6)

- Luton (40.8) and

- Stevenage (41.2).

The 10 slowest postcodes were:

- London West (107.9 days)

- Llandudno (99.2)

- London North West (87.4)

- Durham (85.3)

- Twickenham (84.9)

- Blackburn (84.9)

- Middlesbrough (83.7)

- London South West (81.5)

- Blackpool (81.5)

- Sunderland (81.1).

The HOA used a tool called EstateAgent4Me to find the data, looking at over 100 postcode areas in England and Wales.

The postcode area relates to the address of the estate agent advertising the property, so this data does not include online only estate agents.  The data in this research came from nearly 18,000 search results generated in December 2017.

The HOA is only one of a number of organisations to assess the speed of sales in different postcodes, measured from different parts of the sales process.

The ValPal Network (a product of Angels Media, publisher of Estate Agent Today) shows that it takes an average of 201 days for a property in the UK to sell after an initial online valuation has been requested.

This is 58 days from the initial online valuation to the day when the agent is instructed according to ValPal’s own data; then 62 days on the market, according to Rightmove; then 81 days for finance and conveyancing to be handled, according to MyHomeMove.

Compared with the national average, the five fastest sale postcodes according to The ValPalNetwork are:

- Landrindod Wells (177 days);

- Medway, Kent (186);

- Wigan (187);

- Telford (188);

- Taunton (189).

The top five postcodes with the highest average sale values this month, January, according to ValPal are:

- West central London (£1.557m);

- East central London (£1.170m);

- West London (£1.109m);

- North London (£990,681);

- South West London (£911,407).