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The time employees spend selling their home is costing UK businesses millions of pounds, according to research from property company National Homebuyers.
Its survey of 500 mortgage holders reveals that 35% admitted to taking at least three days' sick leave when trying to find a buyer.
Even when not taking sick days, many employees allow their move to affect their working day, the survey shows.
An overwhelming 96% of those questioned spent at least some of their time at work on the house selling process, while 20% spent more than two hours per day.
With 1.64 million residential property transactions in 2004, the cost to industry in terms of employee time wasted is certainly in the millions, National Homebuyers estimates.
Julian King, director of National Homebuyers, said: "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.
"It is particularly worrying to see that this impacts on the UK economy as well as individual property owners. As house prices have levelled off each purchase is taking longer. Unfortunately this problem looks set to get worse if the market does not pick up."
