A leading estate agent in Exeter has warned that city housing sales could "grind to a halt" unless action is taken over delays to compulsory pre-sale searches on properties.
A land charges search is normally undertaken by a local authority as a requirement for property transactions to find out what restrictions or charges there are on that building.
The searches were taking Exeter City Council around five working days to complete earlier this month – but due to a "backlog" in the department are currently taking up to six weeks.
Roger Wilkinson, managing director of Wilkinson Grant & Co, is concerned that the extended wait will have an adverse effect on a 'strong' local housing market.
He said: "The property market is the healthiest it's been since the start of the credit crunch in 2007. It's alive and kicking with more people moving.
"But the actual sales process at a local level is slowing down, because of the long delays in local authority searches. We don't want to score an own goal by allowing transactions to grind to a halt."
Mr Wilkinson, who has been an estate agent for 35 years, said the waiting time for a search has escalated over the past few weeks and looked likely to extend further.
"These delays are the longest I've known in a very long time," he said. "It's causing varying degrees of upset and frustration with buyers and sellers. More often than not there's a chain of transactions of four or five people. It could all be ready to go, except for the searches."
Mr Wilkinson is concerned about the social and economic impact of any further extended delays for people needing to move this summer.
He said: "The ticking bomb is the end of the school holidays when parents with children need to move by a certain date. If the delays increase to beyond 12 weeks, it will present more problems because some mortgage offers only last 90 days."
According to the latest figures, searches are taking 2-3 working days in Mid Devon, 4-5 working days in Teignbridge, 10 working days in East Devon, and five to six weeks in Exeter.
Mr Wilkinson said: "Given that turnaround time is much quicker elsewhere, it's putting the spotlight on Exeter. It's causing an element of disbelief amongst some people."
Other property sellers in the city have criticised the "unacceptable" length of time it is taking to conduct searches.
Another city-based estate agent said: "We are seeing whole chains being held up whilst waiting for Exeter properties to get their searches in, and I'm sure some sales must have fallen to pieces whilst people wait."
Exeter City Council says it has taken steps to address the delays, but admits the backlog could take a number of weeks to clear.
Richard Short, Exeter City Council's assistant director of city development, said: "A restructure of City Development, that includes the Land Charges function, was implemented in May. The objectives were to ensure that we deliver good development in the City but also to try and achieve efficiencies. We now handle searches in a different way. Two Land Charges staff did take the reorganisation as an opportunity to take early retirement.
"There has been an increase in searches and the change over is taking time to settle so searches are taking longer than they did earlier in the year. I have arranged additional resources to deal with the backlog, however, it may take a few weeks to clear it since the new staff need training and accuracy of responses is vital."
