New research from Barclays Property Insights, polling 2,000 UK adults, found 28% lack confidence in their ability to navigate a home purchase. When asked to identify specific pain points, 37% cited conveyancing and legal process as their biggest area of uncertainty, matching the 37% who struggle to understand taxes and fees. A further 32% said managing paperwork and documentation left them feeling lost.
For agents, that 28% represents movers who defer, delay or abandon transactions before instruction. For conveyancers, it's evidence of a persistent reputation gap between the technical work performed and the client experience delivered. For proptech vendors selling client communication tools and case management platforms, it's validation that the problem remains unsolved at scale.
What the uncertainty costs
The Barclays data doesn't link confidence levels to actual drop-off rates, but the inference is straightforward. If 28% of willing movers are intimidated by process mechanics, some proportion of that cohort will delay moving, choose a rental extension, or abandon a search rather than commit to a transaction they don't understand.
Estate agents lose instructions at the point of hesitation. Conveyancers lose volume when agents steer clients towards firms perceived as more communicative. Lenders lose mortgage applications when buyers can't translate affordability into total transaction cost.
The scale is harder to estimate without funnel data, but consider this: HMRC recorded approximately 1.24 million residential transactions in England and Wales in 2023. If even 10% of latent demand is suppressed by process anxiety, that's more than 120,000 foregone transactions annually. At an average agent fee of £3,500 and conveyancing fee of £1,200, the lost revenue exceeds £560 million per year before factoring in lender, surveyor and removal income.
Where the opacity sits
The 37% figure on conveyancing and legal process uncertainty isn't new, but it's rarely quantified this precisely. Complaints to the Legal Ombudsman about conveyancers have consistently centred on poor communication, unclear timelines and unexplained cost variations. This data confirms the reputational damage has reached the point where more than a third of the public cite the legal process as a primary anxiety before they've even instructed a firm.
Understanding taxes and fees—also 37%—points to a separate but related gap. Stamp Duty Land Tax calculators are widely available, yet more than a third of respondents still don't feel confident estimating their liability. That suggests either poor tool discoverability or a broader inability to aggregate transaction costs into a single, reliable estimate. Conveyancers who provide upfront, itemised cost breakdowns at inquiry stage have a measurable conversion advantage, yet many still quote on a case-by-case basis after initial contact.
Managing paperwork and documentation (32%) reflects both the volume of information required for a UK property transaction and the fragmented way it's requested. AML checks, proof of funds, mortgage offers, searches, management packs and leasehold documentation arrive from multiple parties on inconsistent timelines. Client portals from vendors including tmgroup, Search Acumen and LMS have attempted to centralise this, but adoption remains patchy and integration between conveyancer, agent and lender systems is incomplete.
The generational split
Younger buyers face a different confidence deficit. Among Gen Z respondents, 39% said saving for a deposit was their biggest area of uncertainty, with 36% unsure how much they could afford to borrow. These are affordability questions, not process questions, and they sit upstream of conveyancing anxiety.
But the data suggests a sequencing problem for agents and brokers. If a third of Gen Z buyers can't confidently estimate borrowing capacity, they're unlikely to progress to the point where conveyancing becomes the primary concern. That places the onus on mortgage brokers and affordability tools to close the knowledge gap earlier, before the buyer ever contacts an agent.
The distinction matters because solutions targeting conveyancing transparency won't resolve deposit or affordability anxiety, and vice versa. Proptech vendors building client journey tools need to address both, or accept they're solving for a subset of the market.