A new report from the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) has landed with some striking numbers. Of the 5,001 homebuyers and sellers surveyed earlier this year, 66% said the experience of moving home was so challenging it put them off doing it again. Nearly a third said the most challenging part was simply waiting to exchange contracts. And over half had experienced a transaction fall through after an offer was already accepted, losing an average of three months in the process.
For anyone working in the quick sale sector, none of this will come as a surprise. These are the pain points our members have been solving for years.
What the OPDA report does, usefully, is put hard numbers behind what the industry has long known: the traditional homebuying process is broken, and consumers are bearing the cost.
A System That Was Never Built for Speed
The report paints a picture of a process that remains stubbornly resistant to change. Buyers and sellers are chasing updates, submitting the same documents multiple times over, and waiting months for a transaction that can still collapse without warning.
For the 35 to 44 age group, arguably the most active segment of the housing market, nearly three in four said the experience had put them off moving again. The report also found that a third of respondents said the difficulty of moving had impacted their family plans, and 31% said it had affected career decisions. The homebuying process is actively constraining the life choices of the people going through it.
When homeowners choose not to move, supply tightens, chains get longer and more fragile, and the knock-on effects ripple through every tier of the market.
What Quick Sale Has Always Offered
Strip away the complexity of a traditional transaction and what most sellers actually want is straightforward: certainty, speed, and a process they can understand. That is precisely the proposition NAPB members have been built around.
No chains. No fall-throughs after months of waiting. No repeated requests for the same documents. A clear offer, a defined timeline, and a completion that happens when it is supposed to. For sellers facing financial pressure, managing a probate, relocating at short notice, or simply exhausted by the prospect of a protracted open-market sale, it is a better outcome.
The OPDA report found that 43% of respondents said chasing updates or waiting for other parties to respond was the single biggest factor slowing their transaction down. In a quick sale, there are no other parties to wait for.
The Sector the Market Is Catching Up To
What is particularly interesting about the OPDA findings is the direction of travel they point to. The report calls for faster transactions, reduced administrative duplication, upfront property information, and simpler ID verification. It argues the property market needs to move toward a model where information is shared once, securely, and at the right time.
That model already exists in the quick sale sector. A professional cash buyer conducts due diligence efficiently and upfront. There is no chain of solicitors waiting on each other, no mortgage lender introducing delays, no renegotiation reopening a deal that was supposedly agreed weeks ago. The structural inefficiencies the OPDA identifies as systemic failures of the traditional market are, by design, absent from a well-run quick sale.
NAPB members represent a fundamentally different way of transacting property. The wider industry is now being asked to catch up.
Trust Remains the Central Issue
The OPDA report recommends that consumers seek out professionals with recognised accreditation. For NAPB, that is the continued case for membership as a meaningful standard. Membership signals to consumers that they are dealing with a buyer who operates within a clear code of practice and is accountable through the Property Ombudsman.
As the market’s appetite for faster, simpler transactions grows, that trust infrastructure becomes more valuable. The report found that 85% of respondents believe the homebuying process will improve in the next five years. The quick sale sector has an opportunity to be central to that improvement, not by waiting for reform to arrive, but by demonstrating that a better way of transacting is already here.
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*NAPB members operate within a strict code of practice and are required to be registered with The Property Ombudsman.
