Documents are scattered
Emails from 2017. A folder on a laptop you no longer own. A solicitor who has since retired. The average seller spends weeks just finding things that should take minutes to share.
Early access open now
Every year, hundreds of thousands of property sales collapse after the offer, usually because of something the seller didn’t know, couldn’t find, or nobody thought to check. The stress, the wasted money, the lost purchase. It doesn’t have to be this way.
umovingu
3 issues found and resolved47 Meadow Lane
Birmingham, B15 2TT. Semi detached · 4 bedroom
Started
2 yrs ago
Documents
21 / 22
Issues fixed
3
Sale ready
Yes
Planning permission, rear extension
Missing cert found and uploaded · 14 months ago
Done
Electrical installation report
Out of date · Renewed 8 months ago
Done
Indemnity insurance, missing Building Regs
Policy obtained · 6 months ago
Done
Title deeds, boundary discrepancy
Confirmed with Land Registry · 3 months ago
Done
These issues were found early, fixed quietly, and the sale went through in 11 days.
Why start before you are thinking about selling
Whether your sale has hidden problems or not, you will wait. You will wait for documents to be found. You will wait for searches to come back. You will wait for solicitors to ask questions that could have been answered before the sale even started. The entire process assumes you arrive unprepared. And you do, because nobody ever told you not to.
0
days the average sale takes from offer to completion
0
sales collapse before completion
0
lost every year in failed transactions
Why the wait happens
When you accept an offer, your solicitor doesn’t hand you everything neatly organised.
They send you forms.
They ask questions.
Title register. Planning history. Building control completion. Gas safety records. Electrical certificates. Fixtures and fittings. Environmental details.
And that’s the moment it starts.
You begin searching, through emails, folders, boxes under the stairs, even chasing old solicitors who may or may not still have the file.
Every seller goes through this.
Every time.
For every property.
Because nobody ever built a system that keeps it all in one place.
Emails from 2017. A folder on a laptop you no longer own. A solicitor who has since retired. The average seller spends weeks just finding things that should take minutes to share.
Local authority searches, environmental checks, drainage, flood risk, these are ordered after an offer is accepted and take 4 to 8 weeks to come back. Nothing can move forward until they do.
A buyer’s solicitor raises enquiries. Each one waits for a response. Each response might need a document. Each document might need a professional opinion. The chain sits still.
The other kind of problem
Your documents can be perfect and your sale can still fall through. Because a buyer’s mortgage lender does not just check your paperwork. They assess the property itself. Its construction type. Its lease length. What the ground beneath it was used for. Whether a surveyor will flag structural concerns. Most sellers have no idea these risks exist until a buyer’s mortgage is refused and the sale is already dead.
Concrete panel, steel frame, timber frame, prefab, Airey, Cornish build: many lenders simply refuse to lend on these property types regardless of condition or paperwork. A buyer can be credit-perfect and still be turned down. Knowing early means pricing accordingly and finding the right buyers before anyone wastes time.
Below 80 years and mortgage options narrow significantly. Below 70 and most high street lenders will not lend. The seller lists, an offer comes in, the buyer’s mortgage is declined at underwriting. A lease extension takes months and costs thousands, but started two years in advance, it is entirely manageable.
Flats in buildings with external cladding are effectively unlendable without an EWS1 certificate. Many flat owners do not know they need one until a buyer’s mortgage application is declined. Getting the certificate can take a year or more and is outside the seller’s individual control.
Coal mining, tin, salt, clay extraction: if the ground has a history, it shows up in local searches. A buyer finds out six weeks into the transaction. Their lender requires specialist structural insurance or a full engineer’s report. The chain stalls while everyone waits. Knowing before listing changes how you present and price the property.
Environmental searches reveal flood zones, contaminated land, former industrial use nearby. Some lenders will not lend in high flood risk areas. Some insurers make the property prohibitively expensive to run. A buyer who discovers this during a purchase can and often does walk away, leaving the seller to start again.
The surveyor values the property below the agreed sale price. The buyer’s lender will only lend against the surveyor’s figure. The buyer cannot make up the shortfall. The sale falls, or the seller is forced to drop the price mid-transaction, under pressure, with no leverage and no time to consider alternatives.
This works both ways
Most buyers do not find out about a property’s problems until they have already paid for a survey, instructed a solicitor, and emotionally committed to the move. By then, walking away feels like failure, even when the right answer is clearly to walk away. umovingu changes that. It gives buyers the information to make a real decision before any cost is incurred.
Mining risk. Flood zone. Contaminated land. Environmental history. These results come back in conveyancing, but by then you have spent money and time and given notice. umovingu surfaces this upfront so you can decide before you are committed.
Past subsidence. Previous flood damage. Structural work. Planning applications, approved and refused. A home’s history is rarely volunteered. umovingu makes it visible, so buyers are not discovering things at the moment they can least afford a shock.
Nonstandard construction. Short lease. Cladding. Units above commercial premises. Lenders have criteria that most buyers never know exist until their application is declined. Checking upfront saves a mortgage application, a survey fee, and weeks of your life.
The purpose is not to put buyers off. It is to give them real information before the costs begin. Some issues are perfectly manageable once you know about them. Others are genuine dealbreakers, and far better discovered before the survey than after it.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Until you do.
The property market has always run on incomplete information. Sellers do not know their own risks. Buyers do not know what they are buying until they have paid to find out. umovingu exists to change that, for both sides, before the first cost is ever incurred.
Get started with umovinguThe timing argument
Discovered during conveyancing, too late
You have accepted an offer. You have found your next home. You have given notice at work.
The buyer’s solicitor raises an enquiry. They discover your 2014 extension has no building control completion certificate. Your buyer’s lender flags it. They want an indemnity policy, but since the enquiry has now been raised, the policy may not be available.
Your buyer loses confidence. They withdraw. The chain collapses. Your onward purchase falls through too.
Result: the sale is dead. You have lost £8,000 in fees, your onward purchase, and four months of your life.
Found by umovingu, 18 months before you listed
umovingu flags the 2014 extension. Notes there is no building regulations entry in your documents.
You contact the council at leisure. They carry out a retrospective inspection. Completion obtained. Document uploaded to umovingu.
When you sell 14 months later, your solicitor shares it on day one. No enquiry raised. No delay. No drama.
Result: the sale proceeds. Completion in 14 days. Total cost: one council inspection fee.
When you are ready to sell
The difference is not a lucky solicitor or a fast buyer. It is whether the paperwork was ready before the offer was accepted. One path starts from nothing. The other was already done.
| Without umovingu · 0 days | With umovingu · 0 days |
|---|---|
|
Day 0 · Offer accepted Clock starts. You have nothing prepared. The scramble begins. |
Day 0 · Offer accepted You are ready. Every document verified and waiting. Nothing to chase. |
|
Day 5 to 30 · Document hunt begins Solicitor requests everything. You search emails, folders, old files, old solicitors. Weeks pass. |
Day 1 · Home record shared instantly One tap. Solicitor and buyer’s side have everything from the start. No back and forth. |
|
Day 30 to 60 · Gaps discovered Missing building regs. Outdated cert. Lender flags construction type. Each one a new delay. |
Day 2 to 4 · No gaps to fill Issues were found and resolved months ago. No enquiries about things you already dealt with. |
|
Day 60 to 90 · Searches ordered Local authority and environmental searches take 4 to 8 weeks to return. You can only wait. |
Day 4 to 6 · Searches already available Ordered and returned in advance. The bottleneck that usually eats two months is already cleared. |
|
Day 90 to 140 · Enquiries and surveys Buyer’s solicitor raises questions. Each answer may need a document or a professional opinion. The chain waits. |
Day 7 to 12 · Mortgage and legal run in parallel Complete information means nothing is waiting on anything else. Everything moves at once. |
|
Day 0 · Completion, if you made it — nearly 0 did not get here. For those who did: six months of stress, waiting and uncertainty. |
Day 14 · Completion Done. Because everything was already done before the sale started. |
Days saved
0
Five and a half months back in your life.
And that is only if the sale completes at all. The 180-day version where everything collapses at day 140 is the one that really costs you.
Get early accessumovingu builds a complete, verified record of your home, while you’re living in it, long before any sale begins. So when the time comes, everything is ready. Nothing is a surprise. And the process that usually takes 22 weeks takes a fraction of the time.
How it works
Answer a few questions about your home. We build the foundation. Takes ten minutes. Then it works in the background.
umovingu shows you everything that exists, everything that is expiring, and everything that could become a problem. You find out now, when you can still do something about it.
A missing certificate. An indemnity policy. A lease extension. These things take weeks when you are not in a chain. They feel impossible when you are. Do them now, on your terms.
Share your complete, verified home record from umovingu with your solicitor in one tap. No scramble. No delays caused by your side. The 22-week process becomes something much shorter, because the work is already done.