Buying / seeking a house

[WipsGlitter]

I know it's maybe a how long is a piece of string question but how long should it take to complete on a house?

Sale agreed 25 Oct (my house I'm the seller)
Buyer has property to sell it is now sold to a first time buyer so no chain
House is empty so no chain at our end

When should it all be done and dusted and keys handed over?? It seems to be taking a v long time. First sale fell through so getting antsy again.

Selling. Not seeking. FFS.

I think the absolute minimum is usually 4 weeks, average something like 12 weeks, but our recent sale/purchase took over 6 months - that included the chain falling apart after the first month and us having to find a new buyer - thankfully our sellers and the people in the chain above were super patient and waited for us....

If you are selling a leasehold flat that can add a bit of extra time as enquiries have to be made of the freeholder and extra checks on the lease completed. Also has everyone had their surveys/valuations done or at least booked as that is a classic hold up point? Also the mortgages are a thing that can add time if anyone's bank/building society is slow to send through their offer.

I wouldn't expect to be in before Christmas if I was you and then of course everything (solicitors, EAs, banks) will stop work for a week over Christmas. Perhaps end of January/early February is a realistic target?

Thanks. I'm selling - it's a property I inherited. All surveys and searches were completed for the first sale before it fell through.

Any other advice from anyone? I've asked my solicitor to push to get it completed by Christmas.

12 weeks is the norm - I bought a chain free flat and was a ftb, still took that long for solicitors to do searches, bank to do mortgage etc and everyone to talk to one another. We could have shave a fortnight off if the buyers had been in the country more and the estate agents had interfered less. It's people that slow purchases down, not chains.

I've never heard of anyone doing it in 4 weeks!

Christmas looks a bit optimistic then!

12-16 weeks is avarage. Our first took 16, our second took 10months from selling ours, 6 from finding a house to buy.