A 60% annual rise in property transaction activity saw the average conveyancing firm clock up its busiest financial year on record in 2021/2022, according to the Q1 2022 edition of the Conveyancing Market Tracker from Search Acumen, the property data and insight provider. 

With pandemic restrictions lifted and industry scrambling to process a backlog of transactions, high registration volumes during Q1 2022 contributed to a total of 1.26m completed transactions in total that were processed by HM Land Registry (HMLR) during the 2021/22 financial year.

The tracker – which monitors business activity and competitive pressures in the conveyancing market – shows this annual total was 87% up on the previous financial year, when just 675,377 transactions were recorded as the market was knocked off course by the coronavirus pandemic. It also represented a 34% increase compared with the 2019/20 financial year before the pandemic first took hold.

Search Acumen’s analysis shows the rush of activity brought more firms back into the conveyancing market. An average of 4,058 firms were active each quarter during 2021/22, up from 3,483 in year one of the pandemic during 2020/21.