The UK property industry has spent years talking about fixing the home-moving process. At PropTech Connect, CentreMove is inviting the industry to come and see its answer.
CentreMove will make its first major in-person appearance before the international PropTech community at PropTech Connect Europe 2026, taking place at InterContinental London – The O2 on 9–10 September. And the timing is rather difficult to ignore. Buying a house is probably the largest financial transaction most people will ever make, yet we still manage much of it through phone calls, forwarded emails, separate portals, spreadsheets and the occasional frantic message asking: “Does anybody actually know what’s happening?” CentreMove was built around the slightly radical idea that they probably should.
The UK property transaction platform brings buyers, sellers, estate agents, conveyancers, mortgage brokers and other professionals into one shared digital environment, giving authorised parties visibility over the same transaction as it progresses. Instead of everyone maintaining their own version of events, CentreMove is designed to create something remarkably unusual in the British property market: a shared version of the truth.
The industry is already admitting the problem
The Government has now set out plans to modernise the home-buying and selling process through greater digitalisation, better information sharing and increased transparency. The numbers explain why. The average UK house sale now takes somewhere between 22 and 28 weeks from listing to legal completion. Even once a buyer is found, an offer-accepted transaction typically takes a further 12 to 16 weeks to actually complete, with conveyancing alone eating up 8 to 16 of those weeks — which is, depending on who you ask, either “thorough due diligence” or “an awfully long time to wait for an email.”
And that’s assuming the transaction completes at all. Recent industry data puts the national fall-through rate at close to a quarter of all transactions, with some surveys of recent home movers suggesting well over half collapse at some point after an offer is accepted. Survey issues, buyer cold feet and chain problems account for most of it. Each failed transaction wastes an average of three months, and costs the people involved somewhere in the region of £2,800 to £3,500 in fees, surveys and mortgage costs. Multiplied across the market, that is very conservatively estimated at close to £2 billion a year, evaporating into solicitors’ letters nobody ever needed to send.
22–28 wks average UK house sale, listing to completion
~24% of transactions fall through nationally
£2bn+ estimated annual cost of failed transactions, UK-wide
Estate agents spend enormous amounts of time chasing updates. Buyers and sellers are frequently left wondering what is happening with the biggest transaction of their lives. The curious thing is that the people involved are generally not the problem. The system connecting them is. CentreMove doesn’t exist to replace estate agents, conveyancers, brokers or lenders — it exists to make it considerably easier for them to work together.
From a URL to the real world
Following its public launch this summer, CentreMove has already begun attracting attention across the property and technology industries. PropTech Connect will now mark the first time the CentreMove team presents the platform to the wider PropTech community in person. The team will be meeting estate agency groups, conveyancers, lenders, technology businesses, investors and potential strategic partners throughout the twoday event, with a number of private meetings already being arranged with organisations interested in understanding the platform, exploring integrations and discussing how CentreMove could fit within their existing operations.
CentreMove will also be speaking with investors and strategic partners interested in the much bigger question behind the business: what would happen if the UK property transaction finally became genuinely connected?
Come and challenge it
CentreMove isn’t arriving at PropTech Connect pretending the future of property has been completely solved. Quite the opposite. The team wants people who actually work inside the industry to see the platform, challenge the thinking behind it and tell them where the friction still exists.
“For years we’ve accepted that buying and selling property simply takes months, involves endless chasing and leaves people wondering what’s happening. We don’t think that’s inevitable. PropTech Connect gives us the opportunity to put CentreMove directly in front of the people who understand these problems better than anyone and ask a very simple question: why are we still doing it this way?”
Gordon Sewell, Co-founder and CEO, CentreMove
For estate agents in particular, the commercial argument is equally straightforward. An agent doesn’t get paid when a property goes under offer. They get paid when it completes. So every unnecessary week inside a transaction isn’t merely inconvenient — it’s delayed revenue. Multiply that by a quarter of the market falling through altogether, and it starts to look less like an occupational hazard and more like a design flaw. CentreMove’s ambition is therefore not simply to make property transactions look more digital. It’s to help make them move.
6,000 people. Two days. One rather large conversation.
PropTech Connect Europe brings together more than 6,000 senior property leaders, investors and innovators from across the world, alongside some 400 speakers and 2,500 companies — the organisers estimate the event alone will generate around 25,000 individual business meetings over the two days. Which, for anyone doing the maths, is roughly 12,500 conversations a day, or one every few seconds if everyone attending simply stood still and talked non-stop. They will not, of course, stand still. Nobody at a PropTech conference ever does. CentreMove will be there for both days, with the team currently arranging a limited number of private meetings and platform demonstrations during the conference for:
- Estate agency groups
- Conveyancers and legal businesses
- Mortgage brokers and lenders
- PropTech companies and integration partners
- Property investors
- Venture capital and strategic investors
- Industry organisations interested in the future of digital property transactions
Some conversations will be commercial. Some will be technical. Some may involve somebody explaining why an idea is completely ridiculous — those may actually be the most useful ones. Because the purpose of CentreMove was never to add another piece of software to an industry already drowning in software. The ambition is considerably bigger: to connect the pieces that already exist. And in September, CentreMove is bringing that idea to London.
Meet CentreMove at PropTech Connect
CentreMove will be attending PropTech Connect Europe, 9–10 September 2026, InterContinental London – The O2.
Organisations, investors, journalists and property professionals interested in arranging a private meeting with the CentreMove team during PropTech Connect are invited to get in touch in advance.
Two days. Thousands of property people. A quarter of the market’s transactions statistically destined to fall through before anyone even gets there. And one very simple question:
Why should moving house still take months?