House purchase: How long might probate take after a change of executor? Argh!

[Wildgarlic80]

We had an offer accepted on an amazing, once in a lifetime property last month, and instructed solicitors on the 15th april

The owner died in Jan 2024, so it was our understanding that probate etc was completed. We’re cash buyers (by the skin of our teeth!) and there’s no chain, so we were hoping for a fast exchange.

A few days ago the solicitors revealed probate has NOT been granted! This is due to a change of executor. No further info given, other than they said the Registry have marked the new application ‘urgent’. We asked for an update yesterday and they said no change, they are still waiting.

Does anyone know how long this might take, after the change of an executor? Is it like going back to square one? Could we be looking at months to wait? Aaaargh!

We sold our house last yr and we’re living in Airbnbs with our kids, which is getting crazy expensive now it’s peak season; we’re struggling to find places for less than £5k/month!

Can anyone help give me a steer on how long this could take, what exactly is going on?

For further info: I bought the will from the registry online, and can see that his total estate is worth £3.5m. He had several properties. There are a few named cash gifts totalling about £300k, but most money is to be given to the local hospital.

If anyone can advise I’d be super grateful 🙏

(Also posted in property, but posting here too for better traffic)

I can’t comment on your probate question but I am buying a house that had probate granted a couple of years ago and it’s still taking forever. We are two and a half months from our offer being submitted and we still haven’t a shred of paperwork. The inheritors seem to have no motivation and there’s three of them, every question seems to involve a month of discussion between them. We are in a chain and it’s a total nightmare, everything else in the chain is nearly done and we haven’t even had the draft pack with the title deeds through (and it’s unregistered so nothing on land registry for us to check and get started with). We are going to end up in an Airbnb soon too just because they are slow and useless.

Should also say this is a £600k house so it’s not an insignificant sum of money to inherit, they just don’t seem to care.

Oh my god that’s awful! Poor you, nightmare

We’ve had everything from their solicitor; the title deeds, a few old invoices from repairs they had done years ago - but it’s basically a “sold as seen” purchase, which we’re fine about.

We’ve had our survey done, and our solicitor has run their searches and done all the paperwork; as far as I can tell everything is is ready to go to get a signed contract…

It’s just the probate that’s left 😬

My friend has just bought a probate property - even with probate being sorted, it still took 16 weeks for the sale to go through. There were no complications, nothing to delay it. The main issues were the searches which took ages! Blame the local authority for that though.

Also I’m wondering; should the agent not have been clear that probate wasn’t granted when marketing the house?! It’s not mentioned anywhere in the advert.

Are we in a position to renegotiate the price, owing to the fact that we’re having to fork out for rented properties with the long delays?

They had another better offer on the property, but those people hadn’t sold their own house yet - the executors accepted our slightly lower one as it was cash 🤔

Probate on a large estate can be lengthy. A change of executor would worry me - has the first executor done very little? Are there arguments about the will? Has the executor died? Who instructed the agent and who are they dealing with now? It could be there are issues with the assets and paying IHT - some is probably payable prior to probate. Plus - if the beneficiaries are not getting much and the nhs is, what’s the rush? If the executor wasn’t a beneficiary, not much urgency at all.

It is a long time but it doesn’t sound straightforward.

Thank you this is v helpful

This sounds like information I need to go and find out…

Our solicitor has been great; can I now ask her to go and find out this level of detail?

Or can I contact their solicitor myself directly to ask these questions?

Bump in case anyone else has experience with this!

Jeeze nothing to add but I need to sell my mums house and this is giving me anxiety!

they may mistakenly believe that prices will rise and so delaying things will mean more money for them

They might do but it was on the market for two years before we offered, with no offers. You’d think they’d be grateful we are and get a move on!

@Wildgarlic80 I’d ask your solicitor to approach their solicitors. Of course they might get nowhere but constant pressure can help. Lots of people in your situation would keep this offer on the table but still be house hunting.

I recently bought a probate property. The owner died during the conveyancing last July. It took a couple of months for probate to be applied for (tax issues on a large estate) but once it was applied for it took around 10 weeks to be granted.

I would ask your solicitor to confirm when probate was applied for, and what the ETA is from the probate office. If they’ve marked it as urgent it can be done as quickly as a couple of weeks.

I bought a house (completed in February). Probate had been granted 2 or 3 years ago after their father's death, but they couldn't find their mum's death certificate from some years before. Just that caused a 2 month delay before i saw any paperwork.

It was a good thing though as my exH fucked about not applying for his mortgage to buy me out and caused a massive delay, so at least i could plea for patience based on them being at fault for the original delay. It was all very stressful and completed 4 days before my mortgage offer expired!

You can contact their solicitor but they won’t speak to you, you’ll need to go through your solicitor for any queries.

If it is genuinely a once in a lifetime dream property I think I’d hold fire renegotiating, especially if yours was a lower offer anyway.

This doesn't make sense to me - if you were able to purchase a copy of the will and can see how much the estate was worth then surely that means that probate HAS been granted ? It only gets made public once the grant has been approved....

I wonder if the issue is that the original executor has died since probate was granted, and so someone else needs to take their place to authorise the house sale - I'm not sure what the process is in that case.

Wow thank you everybody for the thoughtful responses, they are so appreciated.

@poohsticks thank you - as I am learning more about it, I’m wondering if this actually just a matter of change of executor name for the reasons you suggest. In which case maybe it is a reasonably quick resolution.. 🤞

We emailed our solicitor today with a list of questions to put to their solicitor, asking about dates, and why the executor changed, and who the executor is now.

@Nottodaythankyou123 thank you, we probably agree we are best not to raise renegotiation at the moment, at least not until we have more info about the context

Update: some answers from the seller’s solicitor -

Probate was originally applied for in 2024,then granted in May 2025…but they reapplied to change the name of the executor in November (who was an NHS senior official; they were retiring). I still don’t know who the executor is now, despite asking - I guess they don’t want us to hassle the executor…?!!

I feel cross that the agent put the property on the market without being honest about this situation, and that we only found out after spending £5k on surveys and solicitors…

The seller’s solicitor say they have asked for the file to be marked as ‘urgent’ at the registry, but other than that I don’t know what we can do, other than be annoyed!

All ideas welcomed! 🙏

@Wildgarlic80 I may be wrong, but how does retiring from a job affect the role as an executor? The NHs doesn’t offer executor services (does it?) so the executor must have been a named person who then didn’t want to do it. They just found an excuse! Quite frankly, after probate, that is really poor to step down. The executor should have got solicitors to carry on with the work as the executor would then just agree to the division of the money according to the will and agree the house sale. The money is going to a charity and it’s worth paying to have a solicitor sort it out. You have been let down. Are you hanging on in there?

You have a copy of the will so probate has been granted.
Unfortunately I think it's quite a process for an executor to step down at this point
https://communities.lawsociety.org.uk/private-client-solicitor-section-commentary/pas-faq-renouncing-role-as-executor-after-probate-has-been-granted/6003708.article
I was involved in having myself added as a named executor on a grant of probate .
The firm dealing went ahead and applied for probate in only one executors name.
The process in revoking the grant and issuing a new one was lengthy.

Would they let you rent the property until probate sorted ?

I've just checked and it took 2 years for probate to be cancelled and reissued with amended executor details.
But I think we were very poorly served by the firm dealing.

@limetrees32 @MeetMeOnTheCorner thanks so much for the helpful input

A bit more clarity this morning, we got this from the sellers solicitor:

”We had probate but due to a change in trustee, (formerly the outgoing Chief Exec of the NHS Trust; the Grant was in her name) we had to apply to make a second application for probate. It has been passed to a specialist probate officer within the registry and my colleague X is continually chasing them for an update. She is calling them again today to get an update.”

The second application for probate was made in Nov 2025, I don’t know when it was passed to a ‘specialist probate officer’, if that’s a recent thing or not…

We also asked if they think this is a simple administrative change or a more complex situation that has the potential to be drawn out? The solicitor replied:

‘Do not anticipate it is complex, the probate has been granted once before, we have been advised that it is being examined by a specialist probate officer, but no time scale can be provided.’

The ‘no time scale can be provided’ is the worst bit 😣!!

@limetrees32 Oh, yikes! 😧

And I guess for that whole time you’re thinking… ‘maybe it will be next week..!’

Were you privy to many updates or indicators during the process that it would take that long?

We didn't get updates.
If I were you I would ring the probate office for general advice.
Of course they won't be able to discuss the actual case but you could ask what the procedure is when probate has been granted and an executor then wants to retire.
And if it's a complicated or lengthy procedure.
It might give you a better understanding .
Unfortunately the firm that dealt with the will in my case were dreadful and the particular person who was dealing was replaced .
The new person was 100% better so I think we were very unlucky.