London-based Springtide Capital has seen the waiting time for surveyors triple over the past four weeks as the housing market heats up.

Managing director Henry Knight said the average time to wait for a booking had jumped from two to three days to up to ten, and in some incidences stretched for almost three weeks.

He said many surveyors had left the market: “There are clearly more buyers out there, so more transactions taking place and that is combining with the lower numbers of surveyors.

“With the surveyors, it is not something you can just train people up to do in a matter of months. It takes years to become a chartered surveyor.

“It is difficult to see anyone solving the problem so the result is longer transaction times and to move it forward quickly we want lenders to be working to get the valuations introduced earlier on in the process.”

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There was also a risk surveyors would sense the increasing demand and raise their rates, he added.

Last month, in his blog for Mortgage Solutions, Xit2 managing director Mark Blackwell warned about the risk of fraud a lack of surveyors posed.

He said: “Quality counts – but in terms of time, it also costs. All that lovely information takes hours of surveying time to put together. And not many surveyors have got the hours.”