A survey has revealed that the most significant source of irritation for house-buyers and sellers is the length of time the process takes.
In a survey of 1,300 people by conveyance firm 1st Property Lawyers, 55 per cent of respondents said that the duration of a property transaction from start to finish was the most annoying thing about buying and selling property.
Coming in second was another time-related gripe, with 38 per cent citing a delay in exchanging contracts as their biggest irritant, while estate agents’ sometimes liberal interpretation of the truth claimed 33 per cent of the votes.
Estate agents also took fourth place in the list of the most irritating things about buying and selling property because of their perceived inadequacy when it comes to communication (27 per cent) .
Furthermore, sellers complained about agents showing their homes to ‘inappropriate buyers’ (26 per cent) while 15 per cent of buyers claimed to have been shown properties that were out of their price range.
A fifth of survey respondents said they’d been annoyed when the other party had changed the completion date; 17 per cent said they’d experienced a lack of communication from their conveyancer; and 15 per cent had been hacked off when the buyer had tried to renegotiate the price.
Mark Montgomery, commercial director of 1st Property Lawyers, said: “Unfortunately, all too often people are left in the dark about the state of their transaction, and this causes unnecessary uncertainty and stress.
“However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Good quality, professional firms maintain regular communication with customers to keep them in the loop about what is going on with such an important transaction, and a modern conveyancing specialist can often complete transactions in a much shorter space of time than has historically been the case.”
Want to be the first to know when we break a story? Follow @AboutUs on Twitter and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.