The Conveyancing Process Explained: 2026 UK Seller's Guide

By Lisa Hayes · 3 August 2026

Conveyancing is the legal work that turns an accepted offer into money in your account and someone else's name on the title. When you're selling, it usually runs 8 to 16 weeks from the day you accept an offer, though a freehold sale in 2026 is realistically taking 16 to 22 weeks and a leasehold flat 20 to 28 weeks once you factor in searches, enquiries and the chain. Get your paperwork ready before you list and you can shave weeks off that.

That's the short answer. The longer one matters, because conveyancing is where most sales quietly stall — and where a surprising number fall apart altogether. This guide walks you through exactly what happens after "offer accepted", who does what, what it costs, why it drags, and the handful of things that actually move the needle. It's written for the person selling, not the person buying, because your side of the process is different and often overlooked.

What is conveyancing, and when does it actually start?

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring a property from one owner to another. It covers checking the title, drafting the contract, answering the buyer's questions, exchanging contracts and completing the sale. On the buyer's side it also means ordering searches and arranging the mortgage. On your side, selling, it's mostly about proving what you own and being honest about it.

Here's the bit people get wrong: the clock doesn't start when you accept an offer. It starts when you instruct a conveyancer and they've verified your ID and received your paperwork. If you accept an offer on the Monday but don't appoint a solicitor for three weeks, you've just added three weeks to your own sale. The smart move is to line up your conveyancer before you're even on the market, so the moment you shake hands you can say "here's my solicitor, here's the pack, go."

The estate agent will produce a memorandum of sale confirming the price and both parties' solicitors, and send it round. That's the starting gun. Nothing legally binding happens until exchange, which is often two to four months away.

What does the seller's conveyancer actually do?

Buyers get the glamorous jobs — searches, surveys, mortgage. Your conveyancer has a quieter but critical role. They will:

• Obtain your title from HM Land Registry and check it matches reality (right name, right boundaries, any restrictions or charges).
• Draft the draft contract and assemble the contract pack to send to the buyer's solicitor.
• Send you the property forms to complete — the TA6 Property Information Form and the TA10 Fittings and Contents Form — and pass your answers on.
• Field the buyer's enquiries and chase you for answers.
• Obtain a redemption figure from your mortgage lender so your loan can be cleared on completion.
• Handle exchange, hold the deposit, and on completion pay off your mortgage, settle the agent's fee and send you the balance.

Notice what's not on that list: searches. The buyer orders and pays for those. A common myth is that sellers pay for local authority searches. You don't — though ordering your own upfront "seller's pack" of searches can speed things along, and I'll come back to that.

How long does conveyancing take when selling in 2026?

Longer than anyone wants, shorter than the horror stories suggest. The legal stage alone — offer to completion — is running like this in 2026:

Two things bloat those numbers more than any other. First, council searches. Local authority search turnaround has been one of the biggest bottlenecks through early 2026, and it varies wildly — some councils return them in days, others take over a month. You can't control which council your buyer deals with. Second, the chain. Your sale can only move as fast as the slowest transaction linked to it. If the first-time buyer four doors down the chain is waiting on a mortgage offer, everyone waits.

Worth separating two things people muddle: the time to find a buyer and the time to legally complete. This guide is about the second. For the whole picture from listing to keys, see our guide on how long it takes to sell a house in the UK.

What are the stages of conveyancing, step by step?

Every firm dresses it up differently, but a sale moves through six stages. Here's what each one means for you as the seller.

1. Instruction and ID. You appoint a conveyancer. They run anti-money-laundering ID checks on you and take the property details. Do this the day your offer is accepted — sooner if you can.
2. Drafting the contract pack. Your solicitor pulls your title from the Land Registry, drafts the contract and sends the pack — contract, title, TA6, TA10 and any guarantees — to the buyer's solicitor.
3. Searches and survey (buyer's side). The buyer orders local authority, environmental, water and drainage searches, and usually books a survey. This is where the waiting happens. Search results typically land in one to four weeks.
4. Enquiries. The buyer's solicitor reads everything and fires back questions. Your job is to answer them quickly and accurately. This stage sinks more sales than any other.
5. Exchange of contracts. Both sides sign, the buyer pays a deposit (usually 10%), and a completion date is fixed. From this moment the sale is legally binding — nobody can walk away without serious financial consequences.
6. Completion. The balance is transferred, your mortgage is redeemed, the keys are handed over and the buyer's solicitor registers them as the new owner. You get paid.

The gap between exchange and completion trips a lot of sellers up. They assume it's one event. It isn't — and the distinction is important enough that we've written a full guide on exchange of contracts vs completion. If you want the plain answer to "when does the money actually arrive?", we cover that too in when you get the money when you sell your house.

What are property searches, and do sellers pay for them?

Searches are the buyer's solicitor doing due diligence on the things a survey can't see. The main ones:

• Local authority search — planning history, road adoption, tree preservation orders, whether the road out front is the council's problem or yours.
• Environmental search — flood risk, contaminated land, ground stability, historic landfill.
• Water and drainage search — is the property on mains water and sewerage, and where do the pipes run.
• Location-specific searches — a coal mining search in former mining areas, a chancel repair check, a commons search, and so on.

You, the seller, don't order or pay for these. The buyer does, usually £250–£450 all in. But you can help your sale by anticipating what they'll turn up. If you're in a former coal mining area or a flood-risk zone, get ahead of it. A buyer who's blindsided by a search result at week eight is a buyer who renegotiates or walks. A buyer you warned upfront tends to hold firm.

What are "enquiries", and why do they cause so many delays?

Once the buyer's solicitor has your contract pack and the search results, they raise enquiries — a list of questions about anything unclear, missing or concerning. Where's the building regulations certificate for that extension? Who owns the boundary fence? Is there a warranty for the damp-proofing? Why does the title mention a restrictive covenant?

This is the stage where weeks vanish. Not because the questions are hard, but because they bounce: solicitor asks you, you dig around for a document you can't find, you reply a fortnight later, they ask a follow-up. Every round trip is dead time.

The most common enquiry-killers are missing paperwork for building work: no building regulations certificate, no FENSA certificate for replacement windows, or works done without planning permission. If that's you, sort it out early — indemnity insurance often solves it for a modest one-off premium, and it's far cheaper than a collapsed sale.

What documents do you need before you instruct a solicitor?

Get these together and you'll leapfrog most of the queue. Some you'll have; some you'll need to request.

Your EPC is a legal must before you can even advertise, and it's valid for ten years, so check whether you already have a current one before paying for a new one. For the full run-down, our legal checklist for selling a house lays out every form and certificate in one place.

How much does conveyancing cost when you're selling?

Selling is cheaper than buying, because you skip searches and Stamp Duty. Expect the seller's legal bill to look roughly like this:

• £800–£1,800typical total seller conveyancing (inc. VAT)
• £400–£900the conveyancer's base legal fee
• £6–£15Land Registry title documents
• £20–£40bank transfer (TT) fee on completion

Leasehold adds more — expect a leasehold supplement of £150–£350 and a management pack fee from the freeholder or managing agent that can run to several hundred pounds. A word of caution: the rock-bottom online quote is often a false economy. A cheap, overloaded conveyancer who takes four days to reply to an email will cost you far more in a lost sale than the £200 you saved. Ask about their caseload and how quickly they answer enquiries, not just the headline fee.

Should you use a solicitor, a licensed conveyancer, or do it yourself?

Three options, and for most sellers the choice is straightforward.

My honest view: unless your circumstances are unusually simple, pay for a professional. The full case for and against is in our guide on whether you need a solicitor to sell your house.

Why is leasehold conveyancing slower?

If you're selling a flat, brace yourself. Leasehold conveyancing takes weeks longer for one main reason: the management pack (sometimes called the LPE1). Your solicitor has to request it from the freeholder or managing agent, and they set the pace. Some turn it round in a fortnight. Others take two months and charge a few hundred pounds for the privilege.

On top of that, buyers' solicitors scrutinise the lease itself — how many years are left, the ground rent terms, service charge history, and any building safety issues. A short lease can spook a mortgage lender and stall the whole thing. If your flat is affected by cladding, expect extra paperwork around building safety. The fix is the same as everywhere else in conveyancing: request the management pack the day you go on the market, not the day the buyer asks for it.

Why do sales collapse during conveyancing — and how do you stop it?

Roughly a quarter to a third of agreed UK sales fall through before completion, and most of those deaths happen during conveyancing, not before it. The usual causes:

• Chain breaks — someone above or below you pulls out and the whole thing unravels.
• Down valuations — the buyer's lender values the property below the agreed price and won't lend the full amount.
• Slow enquiries — the buyer loses patience, or their mortgage offer expires before you exchange.
• Gazundering — the buyer drops their offer at the last minute, betting you're too invested to say no.
• Nasty search results — something turns up that nobody flagged early.

You can't control the chain, but you can control your own transaction. Move fast, over-prepare your paperwork, and keep the buyer warm through your agent. If the worst happens and your chain does break, don't panic — our chain collapse rescue guide walks through your options.

Seven ways to speed up conveyancing when selling

1. Instruct your conveyancer before you list. Have the contract pack half-built before you even accept an offer.
2. Fill in the TA6 and TA10 properly. Vague or half-answered forms generate a fresh round of enquiries every time.
3. Find your certificates now. Building regs, FENSA, guarantees, boiler service records — hunt them down early.
4. Sort indemnity insurance early for any missing paperwork rather than arguing about it at exchange.
5. Reply to enquiries within 48 hours. Speed is contagious; so is delay.
6. Chase your own side. A polite weekly call to your conveyancer keeps your file on the top of the pile.
7. Price it right from day one. Overpricing invites a down valuation later. Start with a realistic figure — our house valuation guide shows how to get there.

Does selling to a cash buyer skip all this?

Not skip — shorten. You still need a conveyancer, contracts still get exchanged, ownership still gets registered. But a genuine cash buyer with funds ready removes the two biggest time sinks: no mortgage application and no onward chain. That's how reputable cash house buyers and "we buy any house" firms complete in weeks rather than months.

The trade-off is price: expect below-market offers in exchange for speed and certainty. Whether that's worth it depends entirely on your situation. If you're facing repossession, a broken chain, or a probate sale you just need finished, the certainty can be worth far more than the last few percent of value. If you've got time and a sound property, the open market will usually net you more.

The best decision isn't the fastest or the highest — it's the one that matches your actual deadline and your appetite for risk. Be honest with yourself about which one you're optimising for.

What actually happens on completion day?

Completion is quieter and more anticlimactic than most people expect. There's no big signing ceremony — that already happened at exchange. On the agreed completion date, the buyer's solicitor sends the balance of the purchase price to your solicitor by bank transfer. Once it lands, your solicitor confirms completion, tells the estate agent to release the keys, and the property is legally the buyer's.

Behind the scenes your solicitor is busy for the rest of that day and the next few: they use the incoming funds to redeem your outstanding mortgage (paying the exact redemption figure agreed with your lender), settle the estate agent's commission and their own bill, and then transfer the remaining balance to you. In a straightforward sale you'll usually have your money the same day or the next working day, sent by CHAPS. In a chain, everything is choreographed so the money cascades up the line — which is why completions cluster around late morning and early afternoon, and why a single delayed transfer can leave several families sitting in vans full of furniture. If you're relying on the proceeds to fund an onward purchase, tell your solicitor early so they can time it properly.

One practical tip: don't book the removal van for the crack of dawn on completion day. Keys aren't released until the money clears, and that rarely happens before midday. Aim for an afternoon move and you'll save yourself a stressful morning of waiting on a doorstep.

Is the process changing? Upcoming home-buying reforms

The government has been consulting on reforms designed to cut the number of sales that collapse and speed the whole process up — the headline ideas being more information provided upfront by sellers and moving towards greater commitment earlier in the transaction. Nothing has fundamentally rewritten the six stages above yet, and you should sell under the rules as they stand today rather than waiting for a reform that may take years to bite. But the direction of travel rewards exactly the behaviour I've been pushing throughout this guide: prepare your information early. If upfront material packs do become the norm, the sellers already doing it voluntarily will simply have a head start.

The bottom line

Conveyancing has a reputation for being a mysterious black box that swallows months of your life. It isn't. It's a fairly predictable sequence, and the sellers who sail through it are simply the ones who prepared early and answered fast. Line up your conveyancer before you list, get every document ready before anyone asks, and reply to enquiries the same week they land. Do that and you'll be in the quick quarter, not the stalled majority.

If you want to see what your home could fetch — and how a fast, chain-free sale stacks up against the open market — compare your offers with a free valuation and decide with the numbers in front of you.