CentreMove opens to UK estate agents to speed property transactions

CentreMove has opened onboarding to estate agencies across the UK, pitching a shared platform designed to reduce delays in Britain’s slow home-moving process. The move targets a market where transactions often stall after offers are accepted and completion can take months.

Why it matters: - Britain’s property market has a transaction-speed problem, not a demand problem. - Delays after an offer is accepted can waste months of work for agents and buyers. - Faster, more transparent transactions could cut fall-throughs and reduce lost commission across the market.

What happened: - CentreMove opened onboarding to estate agencies across the UK. - The platform is now available for agencies that want early access without a waiting list or a lengthy sign-up process. - CentreMove is built by NBS Technologies. - A LinkedIn profile for Alfie Brown was included in the release.

The details: - CentreMove brings buyers, sellers, estate agents, solicitors and lenders into one shared, real-time platform. - The platform is designed to give every party the same information at the same time. - Searches, identity verification and material information move to the start of a transaction instead of after an offer is accepted. - CentreMove says that shift can reduce completion times from months to weeks. - The release says the average time to exchange contracts has passed 100 days. - The release says the full home-moving journey now takes more than seven months on average across Britain. - The platform lets agencies give clients a live transaction tracker. - CentreMove says agencies can cut update calls and emails to almost nothing. - Agencies can prepare documentation before offers are accepted. - The platform is intended to reduce avoidable delays and help sales complete faster. - CentreMove says the system can improve transparency during the transaction. - The platform is also positioned as a way for agencies to stand out from competitors still working without full visibility. - Research from the Open Property Data Association, surveying 5,000 recent home movers, found that 58% of transactions now collapse after an offer is accepted. - That research found failed sales waste an average of three months of work per transaction. - The research estimated a £1.97 billion annual cost to the UK economy. - Rightmove estimates lost agency commission at £392 million a year. - GetAgent estimates the ongoing cost at roughly £2.8 million a day. - Mortgage issues and late-surfacing information remain the most common reasons transactions fail.

Between the lines: - CentreMove is trying to reposition estate agents from reactive coordinators to participants in a shared transaction system. - The pitch is that earlier visibility should reduce expensive surprises later in the chain. - The platform’s value proposition rests on moving information forward, not adding another separate tool to the process. - The comparison in the release suggests the current home-moving process is slow enough that basic status updates still consume a large share of agent time.

What's next: - Estate agencies can register interest directly with the CentreMove team for early access. - CentreMove’s next challenge is turning its real-time workflow pitch into adoption across a fragmented property market. - The platform will need agencies, solicitors and lenders to work from the same shared process for the speed gains to hold up.

The bottom line: - CentreMove is betting that Britain’s property market can move faster if every party sees the same information before a deal starts to wobble.