I'm writing a book about why moving home in Britain has become so painful. I don't want it to be my opinion. I want it to be yours.

Somewhere in Britain this morning, a solicitor asked an estate agent to fax something over.

It's 2026.

That's the industry we work in. And if you've spent any time in it, you didn't laugh at that — you winced, because you know exactly which firm it was.

Here's where we've ended up according to our 130-page white paper review of the housing market.

One in three agreed sales collapses before completion. It costs the buyer and seller an average of £3,419 each — money gone, not just time. Over twenty weeks to reach exchange, when before the internet existed it took six to eight. Around 80% of an agent's or conveyancer's working week is spent chasing progress: not doing the actual work, but ringing round to find out whether the work is happening.

And roughly £5.42 billion of estate agency commission is lost every single year to transactions that never complete.

That last number is the one that should stop us all in our tracks. It isn't money the industry never had a chance at. It's money that was earned, worked for, and then evaporated because the system we all operate inside is specifically designed to lose it.

Thirty years of talk

I've been in the property world since 1997. In that time I've watched governments, trade bodies and assorted "experts" announce that they're going to fix the home-moving process. HIPs came and went. Endless consultations came and went. Housing ministers came and went faster than the average transaction completes. Counsels were established which achieved three name changes in seven years.

Nothing changed. Or rather, it did — it got slower, more expensive and more stressful for everyone involved. And in the age of significant advances in technology, its a terrible state of affairs.

Off the back of the white paper, I could write another book full of my opinions about all of this. But there are enough of those already, and most of them are written by people who have never valued a house, never held a chain together late on a Friday afternoon, and never had to ring a seller to explain that after nineteen weeks of delays, the buyer has finally walked.

I'd rather do something more useful.

What I'm actually asking for

I'm interviewing estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage advisors — the people who live with this every day — and building the book out of what they say. Not paraphrased. Not tidied up into something safe. Delivered exactly in their own words.

I want to know where the time really goes. What a fall-through actually costs you, not in commission but in your week, your energy, your team. Whether you can spot a sale that's going to collapse before it does. Where the blame honestly lies between agents and conveyancers, once nobody's performing for an audience. And what it would genuinely take to fix the British housing market — without waiting for Westminster to have another go.

Full transparency - the last question I ask everyone is simply: what should I have asked you that I didn't? It's consistently where people say the thing they actually came to say.

What's involved, and what I promise

One Zoom call. Thirty to sixty minutes, depending on how much you want to say. No preparation needed. Just speak from the heart.

Importantly - this is not a sales call in disguise. I won't pitch you anything. That's not a soft promise — it's the condition that makes the whole thing worth doing, because a conversation with a pitch waiting at the end of it isn't an honest conversation.

You'll approve every word attributed to you before publication. If you'd rather speak anonymously, you can, and plenty will — some of the most valuable things contributors have told me so far were things they couldn't say with their name on. You'll be credited as a contributor, and you'll get a complimentary signed copy when it's published.

Being straight with you about numbers

Around twenty to thirty voices will make it into the finished book. I'd happily speak to a great deal more than that, because frankly the conversations have turned out to be worth having in their own right.

So I'm not going to tell you that places are nearly gone. They're not. What is genuinely limited is my diary — these are proper conversations, not fifteen-minute tick-box surveys, and I can only run a handful in any given week. If you put your hand up today you'll be speaking to me sooner than if you put it up in six weeks time.

That's the only scarcity here, and I'd rather say so than manufacture one. It seems a poor start to a book about transparency in our industry otherwise.

The interviews have already begun, and what's coming out of them is more gruelling than I expected. One agent with thirty years expertise behind him summed up the whole problem in a single line I've not been able to shake since.

If you've got something to say

Comment "I'm in" below, or send me a message, and I'll come back to you personally to find a time that's convenient.

And if someone came to mind while you were reading this — someone who'd tell it straight — tag them. Particularly if they've got a horror story to share. I've read a few of them and its about time they were given a platform to share what's really wrong with the home-moving process today.

Our industry has been talked about for thirty years. It's time it spoke for itself.

Silas J. Lees MRICS has worked in property since 1997 as a negotiator, valuer and chartered surveyor, has spent several years as a landlord and public speaker, including four years behind the scenes within law firms. He is the co-founder of WiggyWam and The Maverick Movement.