Stop Buying More Leads. Start Completing the Sales You Already Have.

The property industry has become exceptionally good at generating opportunities. It has portals designed to attract buyers, prospecting systems designed to find sellers, valuation tools designed to create instructions, CRMs designed to nurture leads and an ever-growing collection of platforms promising estate agents more enquiries, more valuations and more business.

There is just one rather uncomfortable problem with all of this. Estate agents do not generally get paid for generating a lead. They do not get paid for winning an instruction, finding a buyer or putting up a Sold STC board. In most traditional agency models, they get paid when the transaction actually completes.

That makes the industry's continued obsession with lead generation rather curious, because while enormous amounts of money, technology and attention are poured into getting properties to Sold STC, the system that takes over afterwards continues to lose an extraordinary number of the transactions already won. Perhaps, then, the bigger commercial opportunity is not generating more leads at all. Perhaps it is protecting the ones already sitting in the pipeline.

Research published by GetAgent in June 2026 estimated that 24,122 residential property transactions fell through during May alone. Using an average property price at exchange of £358,489 and an assumed typical agency fee of one per cent, it calculated that those failed transactions represented around £86.5 million of estate agency commission either delayed or lost during that single month. That works out at approximately £2.8 million every day.

It is an extraordinary figure, but what makes it particularly important is where in the process that money is being lost. These were not cold leads that failed to respond to an email or sellers who decided against putting their homes on the market. These were transactions where the instruction had already been won, the property had been marketed, viewings had taken place, a buyer had been found, negotiations had happened and an offer had been accepted.

In other words, much of the expensive work required to create the transaction had already been done. Yet the transaction still failed to turn into revenue. This is not simply a lead-generation problem. It is a revenue-preservation problem.

The scale becomes even harder to ignore when we look at research published by Connells Group in May. Its analysis found that 37 per cent of agreed sales in 2025 did not reach completion. For leasehold properties the figure was even higher, at 43 per cent, compared with 36 per cent for freehold transactions.

Just as concerning is how late some of these failures are occurring. Nearly a quarter of fall-throughs happened more than three months after the sale had been agreed. Freehold transactions that eventually failed had been running for an average of 85 days, while failed leasehold transactions collapsed after an average of 115 days. Consider what is buried inside 115 days of a property transaction that ultimately produces no completion.

There will have been calls between agents and clients, emails between solicitors, updates to buyers and sellers, mortgage discussions, survey results, enquiries, chain chasing, document requests, compliance work and endless attempts to find out what somebody else in the transaction is doing. Staff time is consumed, managers become involved and both buyers and sellers become increasingly frustrated. After almost four months of work, the sale can still disappear. This is more than an inconvenient way to move home. It is an extraordinarily expensive way to run an industry.

Part of the problem may be that we have built the property transaction backwards. The front end has become increasingly sophisticated. Estate agents can identify homeowners, predict likely sellers, automate valuation campaigns, advertise properties to enormous audiences and capture buyer enquiries almost instantly.

Then a sale is agreed and one of the most financially valuable assets inside the agency enters a fragmented process over which the agent suddenly has far less visibility.

The seller has a solicitor. The buyer has another. There may be a mortgage broker, lender, surveyor, managing agent, freeholder or management company involved. Everybody has their own systems, their own documents and their own method of communication. Important information sits inside emails, PDFs, case-management software, portals and telephone conversations that other people in the transaction cannot necessarily see.

Estate agents then employ sales progressors whose job often involves calling all of those people and asking a deceptively simple question: what is happening?

The fact that an entire job function has developed around repeatedly chasing other parties for information should tell us something about the infrastructure underneath the transaction.

We have sophisticated technology for acquiring the customer and remarkably limited shared visibility once that customer has been acquired.

The increasing length of transactions makes that fragmentation even more dangerous. Connells' figures showed that the average home reaching exchange in April 2026 had already spent 104 days under offer. That is around four weeks longer than in April 2019. Seventeen per cent of homes were taking more than six months simply to reach exchange, while leasehold transactions were taking an average of 155 days.

Time matters because every additional week creates more opportunities for a transaction to fail. Mortgage products change, people's circumstances change, chains break, survey problems emerge, buyers become nervous and sellers lose patience. What might have been a manageable issue in the first fortnight can become a deal-breaking problem by month four. Speed, therefore, is not simply about creating a nicer consumer experience. It is a form of risk management.

Consumers are paying heavily for these failures too. Santander's Fixing the Broken Chain research estimated that around 530,000 housing transactions fail every year in England and Wales. It calculated a direct cost to consumers of approximately £560 million, alongside a further £950 million impact on the wider economy. That means the consequences of failed transactions are estimated to cost at least £1.5 billion every year.

There is a human cost behind those figures as well. More than half of the buyers surveyed by Santander said they felt constantly or frequently stressed during the transaction. Those who experienced failed purchases reported increased anxiety, disrupted sleep and reduced confidence about going through the moving process again. WiggyWam's own wall of complaints has compiled over 4,000 of these from buyers, sellers and others across the industry. You can check out those complaints here

So almost everybody involved is paying for transaction failure in one way or another. The seller loses time and potentially money. The buyer can lose survey, legal and mortgage costs. The estate agent risks losing commission. Conveyancers spend significant time on files that may never complete. Brokers can lose business. Other people in the chain become exposed to delays and failure through no action of their own. Yet the property industry's commercial answer is very often to generate another lead. Perhaps we are solving the wrong problem.

The contrast becomes particularly interesting when we look at what agencies are prepared to spend acquiring those opportunities in the first place. Rightmove reported average revenue per agency advertiser of £1,636 per month during the first half of 2026, an increase of eight per cent year on year. Annualised, that is approximately £19,632 per advertiser. This is not an argument that Rightmove has no value. It has an enormous consumer audience and agents use it because that audience can generate business.

The more interesting question is what the industry's spending tells us about where value has historically been placed. Thousands of pounds a year to generate exposure is considered a normal cost of doing business. Lead-generation platforms, prospecting tools, CRMs, additional advertising and marketing subscriptions are all accepted because they promise to create the next opportunity.

But how much value should the industry place on protecting the commission attached to opportunities it has already created? If a business is prepared to spend heavily to win an instruction, surely helping that instruction reach completion deserves at least the same commercial attention - if not more.

There is another question worth asking here too, because the way we think about property visibility has barely changed since the portals became dominant.

Walk down any high street and you can pass several estate agents, mortgage brokers and solicitors. You can look through their windows, read what they offer and decide whether to walk through the door. Nobody invoices those businesses every time a passer-by happens to see what is displayed inside.

Of course, the high street is not free. Businesses still pay rent, rates, staff and marketing costs, and online portals have built huge audiences that have genuine value. The comparison is not exact and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. But it does raise an interesting question about where the real value should now sit in a digital property market.

In 2026, simply displaying a property online is no longer particularly difficult technology. The far harder challenge is what happens afterwards: preparing the seller properly, gathering the right information early, connecting the professionals involved, keeping documents together, making progress visible and reducing the risk of the transaction falling apart. Perhaps the next evolution of the property market is not another battle over who owns the biggest digital shop window. Perhaps it is a shift in where the industry places value altogether.

We have spent two decades digitising the shop window while leaving much of the paperwork, stockroom and delivery network behind it fragmented.

What makes this particularly timely is that Government and many of the industry's largest organisations have now started arriving at much the same conclusion about what is wrong.

The Government's Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, published in June 2026, identifies many of the familiar problems: information arriving too late, repeated processes, inadequate upfront information, duplicated identity and anti-money-laundering checks, fragmented data and poor visibility across the transaction.

Its proposed future includes better upfront information, digital property records, sales packs, improved data sharing and systems that allow the various professionals involved in a move to work together more effectively.

Propertymark has reached a similar position. It has called for a shared digital platform or single access point through which relevant property information could be uploaded, updated and securely accessed by the different parties involved in the transaction.

Then, on 25 August, Property Industry Eye reported another group of senior industry figures joining an initiative intended to shorten transaction times and reduce fall-throughs.

They captured the problem particularly neatly when they said: "Britain isn't short of property websites or estate agents. What we're short of is completed moves." That is the important shift.

For years the conversation around property technology has concentrated heavily on helping agents find more sellers, generate more buyers and market more properties. The conversation is finally moving towards what happens after the offer has been accepted. The question now is whether the industry really needs to wait years for change.

The Government roadmap stretches through 2027 and 2028 and towards the end of the current parliamentary term. Legislation takes time. Agreeing technical standards takes time. Creating industry-wide interoperability takes time. But much of what professionals say they need does not require waiting until 2029.

A seller can begin preparing information earlier today. A solicitor can become involved earlier today. Property documents can be gathered before a buyer is already waiting for them. Outstanding tasks can be made more visible. Professionals can work around a shared transaction. Buyers and sellers can be given clearer information about progress. None of that requires an Act of Parliament.

This is precisely the problem WiggyWam was built to address. It was never intended simply to be another property portal competing for the same property listings. The more interesting challenge begins after somebody decides to move.

A WiggyWam Seller's Pack allows the seller to begin preparing property information earlier rather than waiting until the sale is already underway. Smart forms help gather structured information and supporting documents. The Moving Hub provides a central place around the move, the Property Workspace centralises communication, conversations and updates, while role-specific dashboards allow sellers, buyers, estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage brokers to see the information relevant to them.

Tasks and milestones provide greater visibility of what has happened and what remains outstanding. Documents sit inside the moving hub dashboards around the transaction rather than disappearing into multiple inboxes. Where linked moves exist, the chain can become more visible, helping participants understand where potential problems may be developing.

The intention is not to replace estate agents, conveyancers or mortgage brokers, and neither is it to force businesses to abandon specialist systems they already use. It is to connect the people involved in the move.

That distinction matters because one of the biggest obstacles to improving the home-moving process has always been adoption. New technology often arrives with another integration project, another contract, another implementation programme and another requirement for staff to change the way everything works. Removing friction from property transactions has to include removing the friction from adopting the tools intended to improve them.

That is also why the comparison with current industry spending is interesting. Rightmove's average revenue per agency advertiser was £1,636 per month during the first half of this year. The WiggyWam Property Maverick membership is currently £147 per month (this includes all property listings). The Solicitors and brokers is far less.

They are not directly comparable products and should not be presented as though they are. Rightmove is primarily an enormous property advertising marketplace. WiggyWam combines property marketing with professional discovery, Seller's Packs, Property Workspaces and transaction infrastructure. The point is simply that using shared transaction infrastructure need not involve another enormous technology bill.

An agent does not have to stop using an existing portal or throw away a CRM that already works. A conveyancer does not need to surrender their case-management system. A broker does not need to rebuild their business around somebody else's software. They simply need a better way of working together around the same move. This is where the Maverick Movement becomes more than branding. Technology on its own will not repair the property market. People have to decide to work differently.

The Maverick Movement brings together independent estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage professionals who believe independence should not mean isolation. They retain their own businesses, their brands, their clients, their professional judgement and the systems they choose to use, while sharing the same vision and values, and the infrastructure designed to make transactions more transparent and easier to progress.

That matters because the corporate property world already understands the value of connected ecosystems. Increasingly, major organisations are joining distribution, technology, data, financial services and professional services together.

Independent firms need the ability to collaborate too, but without having to surrender their independence in order to achieve it.

Perhaps the most important change of all, however, is cultural. The industry needs to stop treating Sold STC as the finishing line. It is not. An agreed sale is an opportunity to earn revenue. Completion is when that opportunity becomes real.

If we want a healthier property industry, perhaps we should start measuring more than instructions, market share and lead volumes. We should ask how many agreed sales actually complete, how quickly they complete, how early problems are identified and how much staff time is being consumed simply chasing information that ought to be visible already.

An agency with 100 agreed sales and a poor completion rate may ultimately be running a less successful business than an agency with 80 agreed sales that consistently gets people moved.

That changes the question completely. Instead of asking how we generate more leads, perhaps we should ask how we protect the sellers we have already won, the buyers we have already found, the chains we have already assembled and the commission we have already worked incredibly hard to earn.

The UK does not have a shortage of property portals. It does not have a shortage of estate agents and it certainly does not have a shortage of proptech. What it continues to have is a shortage of completed moves.

The industry already understands the problem. Government now understands the problem. The technology required to begin addressing large parts of it already exists. We do not have to wait until 2029. We can start with the next seller who walks through the door.

Sources and further reading

Connells Group — Conveyancing delays push time to exchange contracts past 100 days, 11 May 2026. This provides the 37 per cent fall-through figure, leasehold comparison, transaction times and late-stage failure data. Read the Connells Group research

GetAgent research via Estate Agent Networking — UK property fall-throughs cost estate agents estimated £2.8m every day, 26 June 2026. This is the source of the estimated £86.5 million May commission impact and £2.8 million-per-day calculation. Read the research coverage

Rightmove plc — Half Year Financial Report 2026. Source for average revenue per agency advertiser of £1,636 per month and related agency revenue figures. Visit Rightmove Investor Relations

Santander UK — Fixing the Broken Chain research, September 2025. Source for the estimated 530,000 failed transactions, £560 million direct consumer cost, £950 million wider economic impact and consumer stress findings. Read Santander's research

UK Government — Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, June 2026. Government proposals covering upfront information, digital property information, sales packs, data sharing, identity and AML reform and wider transaction improvements. Read the Government roadmap

Propertymark — Home buying and selling roadmap promises robust support for agents as sector transforms, June 2026. Includes Propertymark's position on shared digital access to transaction information. Read Propertymark's response

Propertymark — Material information reform must be shared, digital and realistic, January 2026. Further discussion of fragmented communication, repeated information and shared access to property information. Read Propertymark's material information response

Property Industry Eye — Property industry leaders join forces to tackle transaction delays, 25 August 2026. Recent coverage of industry collaboration around transaction times, fall-throughs and completed moves. Read the Property Industry Eye article

WiggyWam — Property Maverick membership. Current information on the Property Maverick plan. View WiggyWam

The Maverick Movement. Background to the movement and its approach to collaboration between independent property professionals. Visit The Maverick Movement