HOMES take an average of four months to sell from start to finish, according to online homebuying company Property Solvers.

The team tracked the time taken between a dwelling being advertised on the Rightmove website to its being officially marked as sold at HM Land Registry.

Some 93,218 house sales across England and Wales were observed during the course of a year, with the average sale taking just over 16 weeks.

The slowest pace was seen in Southend-on-Sea, where 526 sellers waited an average of 18 weeks to dispose of their homes.

The fastest was in central London, where a handful of sales took just 10 or 11 weeks.

Across Norwich, Chester, Warrington, Bournemouth, Llandudno, Blackburn, Newport and Swansea, sellers waited an average of 15 weeks for the whole process to go through - one week less than the national average.

Property Solvers co-founder Ruban Selvanayagam from Property Solvers said the aim of the research was to "give people a more realistic idea of the time it takes to sell a home", including viewings, surveys and exchange.