The average St Albans property move currently takes between 112 and 123 days, new data has revealed.

According to research by Property Solvers, AL3 is the fastest-moving St Albans postcode, with sales typically taking 112 days to progress from initial listing to completion.

This is followed by AL1 (116 days), AL4 (122 days) and AL2 (123 days).

The house buying firm analysed 82,984 property sales in England, Scotland and Wales over the 12 months from March 2020 and found that the average sales period was 115.93 days (or 16.56 weeks).

Property Solvers co-founder, Ruban Selvanayagam said: “Although buyer demand hasn’t waned over the course of the pandemic, the length of time for transactions to complete has certainly lengthened.”

“Operational activity has still pretty much continued, but the home sales industry – like many others – has had to learn to adapt over the last year. Many solicitors, mortgage brokers and other professionals in our sector have been working from home which has often resulted in administrative and other operational delays.”

Positive news around the vaccine roll-out has left Ruban “cautiously optimistic about things picking up over the course of the year”, however.

Meanwhile, Rightmove has labelled this the strongest spring sellers’ market in 10 years, with record buyer demand and a shortage of supply increasing the average price of property coming to market by 0.8 per cent this month.

Rightmove’s Tim Bannister said: “Concerns of a cliff edge for the housing market at the end of March have dissipated.

“The current annual rate of house price increase stands at a historically modest rate of 2.7 per cent, but we stand by our forecast for the year of 4 per cent which we published in December.”