How long does it take to Sell a House?

The truth is, selling a house can take a great deal of time. Getting it right can be a difficult balancing act. The house selling process can be impacted by factors both within https://homesalehardy.com/ your control, as well as those outside of it. Essentially, you must choose if you want to sell quickly for less than the full market value, or if you can afford to wait, and sell for a higher price.

Our latest guide begins with explaining how choosing the way you sell your property will impact the time it takes to sell your home. We then run through the typical timeline in selling a property and how the current housing market can impact your sale.

Finally, we look at what to do should you find that you are not getting any offers on your house and how you can improve your chances of securing a sale.

At the end of our guide we list some of the most frequently asked questions asked by vendors when wanting to know how long it takes to sell a property.\

Deciding which way to sell your house
Once you have decided to sell your house, the first big decision you will need to make is which method you use to sell it. In this chapter, we examine the most common house selling methods available in the UK and explore their typical timeframes.

Broadly, there are three methods for selling houses in the UK today:

An open market sale via an estate agent
Property auction
Selling to a cash house buying company
Which of the three methods you choose is critically important, as the method of sale used often determines the level of certainty that you can expect and the price you are likely to acheive.

In general, the method you choose also dictates the timescale of your sale. Faster and more certain methods, such as selling to a house buying company or auctioning a property, can offer a fast sale but at the cost of a reduced selling price. Selling on the open market can maximise your profit, but also remove a great deal certainty. As you can see, there are a number of trade offs to consider when trying to work out how long does it take to sell a house.

Selling on the open market (3-12 months)
Also known as an estate agent sale, putting your home on the open market involves advertising your property with an estate agent in an attempt to find and negotiate a deal with an interested buyer.

Selling your home on the open market remains the most common way houses are sold today and offers a number of significant advantages.

Firstly and perhaps most importantly, good estate agents typically achieve a higher sale price. This is for a number of reasons. These include the agents marketing and negotiation expertise as well as the larger pool of potential buyers they have access to. Estate agents tend to target people who want to buy homes to live in, rather than as an investment. As these buyers don’t have to make a quick profit reselling your property and are in competition with each other, they tend to pay close to (or even above in some cases) the full market value for properties.

Selling at a property auction (approximately 2-3 months)
A property auction offers a very different way of selling your property. These provide a public sale where people bid on houses. They are usually organised by established auction houses, who specialise in running this kind of event. Selling a property via auction is fairly popular in the UK today, with more than 19,000 homes being sold this way in 2022 alone. Property auctions offer a number of benefits over estate agents including speed and an additional level of certainty.