The number of workers taking ‘sickies’ to assist with the selling of their homes is on the rise.
These are the findings of property company, National Homebuyers. According to their research 35% admitted to taking at least three days sick leave while trying to find a buyer.
The trend has been fuelled by slowing property prices as the ‘boom’ wanes. National Homebuyers say properties are now taking twice as long to sell as six months ago. The average house sale in December 2004 took 18 weeks, compared to only nine weeks in May.
But selling homes is taking its toll on productivity even when workers turn up for work.
Ninety-six per cent of those questioned spent at least some of their time at work on the house selling process while a huge 20% spent more than two hours each day.
Julian King, director of National Homebuyers commented: “We often hear stories of people whose lives have become over-run with the daily tasks involved in selling their home. However this survey has revealed the scale and affect of the problem to be worse than we imagined.”
King warns that the problem will get worse if the property market doesn’t pick up.
There were 1.64 million residential property transactions in 2004.
A sample of 500 mortgage borrowers were quizzed for the survey.
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