"The process of selling a home simply hasn’t evolved at the pace required with a rapidly changing housing market and the experience is now so unsavoury that a large proportion of homeowners would rather stay put than repeat it"
- Ruth Beeton - Home Sale Pack
New research from Home Sale Pack has found that 36% of recent home sellers would avoid downsizing in later life to avoid repeating an archaic home selling process riddled with stress-inducing pitfalls.
Home Sale Pack has commissioned a survey of 1,023 people who sold a home within the last 12 months to gain an understanding of how easy they found the selling process, and what impact the experience has had on their desire to sell again in the future.
The survey reveals that 75% of sellers consider the experience to have been difficult.
When asked what the worst part of selling their home was, 47% point directly to the conveyancing process - all of the legal processes that need completing in order to progress, one step at a time, along the long road to exchange of contracts and completion.
The next most difficult part of selling is the process of physically moving home, as cited by 21% of respondents, which is often said to be one of the five most stressful life events a person can endure.
So dreadful was the process of selling their home that 44% of sellers say it is likely to deter them from wanting to climb further up the housing ladder.
When asked if a simpler, less daunting process would make them consider selling again in the future, 62% said ‘yes’.
Looking further into the future, respondents were asked if their recent selling experience was bad enough to deter them from downsizing in later life.
36% said ‘yes’, suggesting that if fewer home sellers plan to downsize, the market bottleneck of available homes for those looking to climb the ladder is only likely to get worse.
Ruth Beeton, Co-Founder of Home Sale Pack, says: “The UK property market relies heavily on the lifecycles of home ownership which see first-time buyers climb the ladder into larger family homes as the need arises, while those with an empty nest downsize to smaller properties thus freeing up the stock required for those who need it most.
"However, the process of selling a home simply hasn’t evolved at the pace required with a rapidly changing housing market and the experience is now so unsavoury that a large proportion of homeowners would rather stay put than repeat it.
"While the conveyancing process isn’t the sole cause, it’s certainly the most prominent influence and I continue to be flabbergasted at the reluctance to change from so many of my peers in the conveyancing sector.”
