The latest diagnosis of the UK property market lands with an uncomfortable but accurate verdict: nothing is fundamentally broken, yet the machinery keeps jamming. Transaction volumes remain resilient by historic standards — HMRC data shows residential sales running at roughly 90,000–100,000 per month through 2024, hardly a market in freefall. Mortgage approvals have crept back above 60,000 monthly, a level consistent with pre-pandemic norms. Yet ask any agent, conveyancer or buy-to-let landlord and the same complaint surfaces: deals that should complete in eight weeks are dragging past sixteen, sometimes twenty. The pipes are not burst; they are furred with sediment, and that sediment is now a material cost to everyone transacting property in Britain.