Conveyancing is where movers feel stuck — barrier and visibility gaps

Ask recent homebuyers where a purchase felt hardest, and conveyancing often tops the list. Ask where they felt least informed, and the legal stage appears again. Those can sound like the same complaint. They are not.

Barrier vs visibility — two different pain points

A barrier is what people say blocked a smooth transaction — delay, complexity, or friction that got in the way. Visibility is whether they could see what was happening while they waited. A move can be slow but well explained, or it can be opaque even when the underlying work is progressing. Treat the two as separate survey answers.

What survey respondents are reporting

Lyons Bowe research reported via The Intermediary on 23 September 2026 surveyed 1,000 recent homebuyers. 42% named conveyancing as the biggest barrier to a smooth property transaction. Separately, 42% of buyers felt they had the least visibility over their transaction during the conveyancing stage. Same percentage, two questions — this guide does not merge them into one metric. Property chains were named by 19% in that research.

How that sits next to mover-cited delay share

Rightmove’s home-mover research in its “agent voices” release of 9 September 2026 found that more than a third (37%) of movers cited conveyancing delays as the biggest cause of hold-ups. That is a delay-share finding from a different Rightmove publication than the 21 September House Price Index. Sample size was not stated on the page checked for this guide, so none is stated here.

As timing context only: industry secondary sources also refer to about 123 days as an average transaction time, but they disagree on whether that clock stops at exchange or at completion. Use the figure only with that flag.

Questions to ask for a clearer legal-stage status update

Not legal advice — process questions:

• What is the current open item on the file?
• Which enquiries are raised, answered, or outstanding?
• Are we waiting on the lender, the local authority, the other side’s solicitor, or us?
• When should we expect the next update if nothing new arrives?
• Who do we contact if updates stop for a defined number of working days?

Why “status silence” feels worse than a known long date

A completion window that is long but dated is easier to plan around than weeks of silence. Visibility gaps turn ordinary legal time into anxiety: people invent stories about missing paperwork, renegotiation, or a collapsing chain. Regular, even short, status notes often matter as much as the underlying legal speed.

TrueDeed private beta

TrueDeed’s thesis is whole-move visibility in one workspace. We are not presenting regulated conveyancing status, live user counts, or AI-face imagery. This piece is not legal advice.

TrueDeed is on a private beta waitlist. Join the waitlist if you want a single place for the move. This page is not presenting a finished mass-market product.