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Original poster

How long did it take for your house sale from offer to moving in?

19 replies

MissPhonic · 23/06/2019 12:54

I'm being SO inpatient at the moment. We've had an offer accepted on a lovely house and we have an offer we have accepted on ours. This is my first home, DP is selling the flat he bought 6 years ago.

Our chain consists of a first time buyer buying ours, an elderly lady we are buying from and she is moving into a bungalow which has no onwards chain.

We have done a survey (needs a fair bit of work but we knew that, no suprises revealed luckily), have recieved our sellers inventory of what is included in the sale and will be handing ours in to our solicitors on Monday.

We have our mortgage offer too.

How long do you think it will take from here? We're desperate to move! (I do know with solicitors its as long as it takes, just hoping for some ideas of how long others take).

OP posts:

Dontgiveamonkeys1350 · 23/06/2019 12:57

How long is a piece of string! I have moved three times. Each fines things are delayed. Gone wrong. Pulled out. Once the solicitor was so slow and bad we had to keep getting advice from another one.

One took a year
One took six months
One took four months.

Everyone is different. I hate moving house and I’m never doing it again.
But I would imagine if everything goes smoothly. A few months ? Though your in holiday time. So people will go on holiday. And in my experience nothing gets done when that happens.

Dontgiveamonkeys1350 · 23/06/2019 12:58

Just re read and that seemed all doom and gloom. I’m sure someone else will come and tell you a normal time when everything is done on time. Good luck

PregnantOnPurpose · 23/06/2019 12:59

Slightly different, but we were first time buyers, promised no chain when we put the full price offer on our house.. it took 9 facking months. I was seething through my teeth by the end, then a recieved an email to say they would be out in the April.. another 4 months! I emailed all parties of out sale to say i wont be paying full price and I want them out by the end of the week or I'm pulling out. Emailed on the Sunday, got the keys Wednesday.

Dont be afraid to be pushy

Namechangerextraordinare101 · 23/06/2019 13:00

5 months but was a rush job at the end to get it done before Christmas!

littlemissminor · 23/06/2019 13:01

Offer accepted in April, moved in October. Our buyers were first time buyers and there were 3 above us in the chain.

I used to work in an estate agent, searches can take up to 8 weeks (ish) depending on the council and the time of year, but you have a very straight forward chain....

As long as all goes to plan, I imagine maybe 8-12 weeks, depending on searches/how proactive your solicitor is (and if they have a summer holiday booked)/time between exchange and completion.

Good luck!

tomboytown · 23/06/2019 13:03

10wks
12wks
11months!- divorce in the chain

HotChocolateLover · 23/06/2019 13:03

Ours took 3 months from offer to moving in. We were first time buyers and there were at least 2 people above us in the chain. It was pretty easy and hassle free to be honest.

RainbowCake · 23/06/2019 13:05

We had our offer accepted at the beginning of April and moved in 2nd week of June, very quick but felt like forever. It helped that we were chain free at our end. Good luck.

Original poster

MissPhonic · 23/06/2019 13:07

Thank you for all the good luck wishes!

I'm itching to get on with things now. I don't want to buy anything for the new house until we're in because I don't want to jinx things and I will just be paying for them to be moved.

We've spent so long in this little flat. It was perfect for us when we moved in but it's on a very shitty estate. I'm fed up of the lack of care around here. Litter gets left out, the communal bins are a nightmare, parking is a nightmare and the straw the broke the camel's back was having our bike shed broken into. They were teenagers, they stole everything they could get off the frames and the police even caught them trying to do the same the next day but all they did was give them a warning.

We can stop grinning when we think about our own bins and curbside recycling!

OP posts:

Original poster

MissPhonic · 23/06/2019 13:08

Rainbow that's amazing!

OP posts:

DramaAlpaca · 23/06/2019 13:11

Our last move was six weeks from getting the offer to moving day. Good luck, OP!

Joans3rddaughter · 23/06/2019 13:26

1.FTB 3months

Offer accepted. Seller promised no chain. Seller joined chain. 6 months.
Seller accepted offer with conditon we would complete in 6 weeks or purchase price would increase £10,000. Our solicitor was ready to complete less that 6 weeks before. Seller would not complete until the final day of the 6 weeks. He was horrid.
Had 2 other properties we sold over the years. Both buyers submitted low offers as cash buyers. Then both went quiet whilst wsiting to get there mortgage offers.

The whole business of buying snd selling is a disgrace but it will not change because it keeps lots of prople in jobs and generates huge amounts of income for the government.

EmilyThornby · 23/06/2019 13:34

Buying: offered end of May, moved in early November.

Selling old house (not in same transaction ie we didn't need to sell to buy) offer accepted in April, they dicked us around, we put back on market and accepted new offer in late July and completed in late September.

Haybo26 · 23/06/2019 13:39

I sold my house in May. No chain involved, took 6 weeks from start to finish. In the process of buying a bungalow, we are due to complete on Friday so that will be 8 weeks start to finish. No chain with that either. Good luck!

Starrynights86 · 23/06/2019 13:56

The property system is so crazy in the UK. In NZ once you make an offer, you can make it conditional but it’s still pretty hard to get out of ie you have to show you actually tried to get a mortgage and couldn’t if finance was a condition. Most sales go unconditional within ten days (exchange) although settlement (completion) can be much longer depending on what you agree. You don’t get the big chains here (lots of people use bridging finance if needed) and you can’t be gazumped or gazundered here either!

Pearlfish · 23/06/2019 13:58

3 months from offer to completion.

rugshade · 23/06/2019 14:00

3 months

availableforlunch · 23/06/2019 14:02

Mine's slightly different as I was a FTB moving into a brand new house but it took 4 weeks between the day I first went to view it and moving in!

cottonwoolbrain · 23/06/2019 14:52

First time 6 weeks - but no chain on either side. We were also in the very fortunate position of being cash buyers

Second time about 12 weeks - our buyer was a chain free cash buyer and the house we were buying was also chain free. Our buyer tried to gazunder us though so we told her we were pulling out and put the house up for rent. As soon as she saw we'd done that she went back to her original offer. All a bit stressful though.

I have no desire to move house for a very long time.

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