Why does buying a home take so long in the UK vs other countries?

If you have ever bought a home in England or Wales, you know the feeling. An offer is accepted, everyone says congratulations, and then nothing is actually settled for the next four months. During that time either side can walk away, for any reason, right up to the last minute. That uncertainty is not bad luck. It is built into the system, and this week the government moved to change it.

What did the government announce?

On 18 June 2026, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government set out a package of reforms aimed at the slowest, most stressful parts of buying and selling a home.

• Upfront sales packs: sellers and their agents must provide the key information (the property's condition, leasehold costs, and chain position) when the home is listed, not months later.
• Earlier binding agreements: a deal becomes legally binding sooner, so a buyer or seller cannot walk away on a whim after an offer is accepted.
• Digital property logbooks: a single secure record that buyers, sellers and their professionals can all see in real time.
• Digital identity checks, electronic signatures and AI-assisted conveyancing to strip out duplication and delay in the legal work.
• A code of practice for agents, and from 2027, mandatory qualifications for estate agents.

The figures behind the reform explain the urgency. The average home purchase takes around 120 days. One in three sales falls through, costing sellers roughly £400 million a year and the wider economy up to £1.5 billion. The government says the changes should cut around four weeks off the process and save a first-time buyer about £650.

Why does buying a home take so long in the UK?

Here is the part almost every other country fixed long ago. In England and Wales, nothing is binding until exchange of contracts, a moment that often arrives months after the handshake. Until then the information is thin, the commitment is zero, and either side can vanish. That single gap is why roughly a third of UK sales collapse, compared with as little as 5 to 15 percent in Germany, the United States and France.

How do other countries buy homes?

Look abroad and a pattern emerges. The countries that buy homes quickly and reliably are not smarter or luckier. They are structured differently. The figures below show how long completion takes after an offer is accepted.

Which countries do it best, and why?

Two systems are worth looking at closely, because the UK reform borrows directly from both.

Scotland

Scotland sits inside our own borders and runs a different system. A Scottish seller must, by law, provide a Home Report (a survey, a property questionnaire and an energy report) before any viewings. Offers are made and accepted through formal letters between solicitors, and the deal becomes binding far earlier. Gazumping, being outbid after your offer was already accepted, is rare in Scotland. The information is upfront and the commitment comes early, which is almost exactly what the new English sales packs are reaching for.

Norway

Norway is often held up as the gold standard. A single licensed professional, the eiendomsmegler, blends the roles of estate agent, lawyer and adviser. Every home comes with a detailed, legally weighty condition report before it goes on the market, and bids are binding. Sales are fast and rarely fall through.

Norway also carries a warning. Its market is about a tenth the size of the UK's, roughly 100,000 sales a year against Britain's 1.2 million, with far fewer chains, and the whole model rests on a body of law that places heavy responsibility on sellers and surveyors. You cannot simply lift the Norwegian rulebook into a much larger, more tangled market and expect it to hold. Copying the outcome is sensible. Copying the mechanism wholesale is not.

What do the systems that work have in common?

Strip every successful system down to its foundations and the same three things appear.

1. Full information is on the table before anyone offers, not dripped out over months.
2. Commitment becomes binding early, so a deal is a deal.
3. The process is coordinated and digital, not stitched together by email between strangers.

The UK reform reaches for all three. Sales packs are the upfront information. Earlier binding contracts are the early commitment. Digital logbooks and online conveyancing are the coordination.

Where does the UK still fall short?

It is a real step forward, but it is not the finished article. A few honest gaps remain.

• It stops short of binding at the point of offer. Even with earlier binding, the system nudges towards commitment rather than guaranteeing it from day one the way the US and Australia do.
• Chains are untouched. Britain's long, fragile chains, where one collapse can topple five sales, are the hardest problem, and no sales pack fixes them.
• The benefits depend on data that still has to be built. Digital logbooks are only as good as the records councils and conveyancers actually feed into them.
• The professional structure stays fragmented. Britain keeps agents, conveyancers and surveyors in separate boxes by design, the opposite of Norway's single accountable professional.

What does this mean for you?

If you are thinking of selling or buying in the next year, none of this changes the ground under your feet yet. The measures roll out in stages through this Parliament. But the direction is clear and it is in your favour. More information, sooner. More certainty, earlier. And fewer sales lost to a process that should never have been this fragile.

The single most useful thing you can do today is the one the rest of the world already does instinctively. Get the facts about your home straight before you commit to anything. A clear, honest view of what your property is worth, and what the local market is doing, is the foundation every fast, reliable sale is built on. That part you do not have to wait for legislation to fix.