To wonder if we could still benefit from stamp duty holiday?

[Landladymews2]

If we put our house on the market now and find a property in the next 1-2 weeks or has that ship now sailed?

Assume that you won’t and have the funds available to pay stamp duty. Do the best you can to move the transaction quickly and it will be a nice surprise if you make it. But with the conveyancers I know saying they’re utterly swamped right now, I’d not count on it.

Never say never, but I certainly wouldn't be counting on it. Our solicitor (a friend) is actually having to turn people away, searches are lagging, 'simple' issues are taking weeks to resolve due to the backlog.

Our recent sale (December) should have taken 6 weeks, instead it took 16.

Probably not. Our house move went completely smoothly and still took 13 weeks after we found a house as solicitors are swamped at the moment and everything is quite slow as demand is so high. I would plan to pay stamp duty the bonus if you don’t.

Is it the solicitors that are the cause of the delay or other things? DH is a lawyer and would probably get one of his colleagues in the convenyancing dept to do ours but if the delays are on other things then it doesn’t help...

If everything went absolutely swimmingly, you might stand a chance but only might. If you're getting a mortgage, you'll pretty much have to be employed with sufficient basic pay and borrowing at somewhere below 85% loan to value for it to go through to offer quickly - assuming no debts, great credit etc. Your house sale would have to be pretty much chain free, same with purchase. You'll have to have a damn good solicitor - don't go for cheap conveyancing. And you'll need a good following wind to get it through. We are warning our clients that if they don't currently have a mortgage offer, sale & purchase agreed, it is unlikely to happen.

Bear in mind that unless you happen to find a chain free property, you'd then have to wait for the vendors to find somewhere, and on and on until the chain completes. And at the moment most Estate Agents won't let you view until you have a buyer for your own property, so it's pretty slow going for it all to come together.

Honestly? Not a chance. Average conveyancing at the moment is 5 months. That doesn't include getting your house sold (could be anything), or chains falling through (half of them at the moment, normally a third).

Currently on month five

The conveyancing insider will help, but even then, Santander took 6 months to agree my exes mortgage (sep-March), our local authority are now on 11 week turnaround for searches.

@Landladymews2

Is it the solicitors that are the cause of the delay or other things? DH is a lawyer and would probably get one of his colleagues in the convenyancing dept to do ours but if the delays are on other things then it doesn’t help...

The searches are taking more time to come back, and even if your solicitor is really quick you’ll be waiting on your vendors/buyers solicitor too.

We had a cash buyer, no chain, empty property & probate completed - still took nearly 5 months!

Some lenders will accept indemnity insurance against searches being completed so the lack of them may not be an issue - as long as you and the solicitors are happy to go ahead without them

@Lovethewater

We had a cash buyer, no chain, empty property & probate completed - still took nearly 5 months!

Same. October 1st til March 1st. Having someone hurrying the conveyancing might help a bit, but you're still relying on buyer's and seller's solicitors, so you're at their mercy - we had everything absolutely sorted, ready to go from day 1, and their solicitors pissed about for months.

Extremely unlikely, we have moved recently, all buying cash from sale, so no mortgage complications, chain of 4, took 4 months. Conveyancers are working flat out, searches delayed. If you want to move, do it, but don’t rely on the stamp duty break.

I move next week. 7 months after putting my house on the market. I think the biggest delay is mortgages approval and dependent on the length of the chain. So if you were a cash buyer or a FTB you might have a chance otherwise I'd really doubt it. But you might be really, really lucky!

We managed it very quickly - put the offer in on a house in December 16th - moved in yday! So the whole process took 14 weeks

We were lucky that the chain was very short though !

You could possibly do it but deffo might be pushing it

DH keeps pushing to try and saying that I should stop being ‘pessimistic’ which I tell him is simply being ‘realistic’. We were planning to move in two years time when the kids are ready to start school. I have young kids and I’m just returning to work after maternity leave. Live near my mum and it’s helpful to have her nearby if kids are off sick from nursery, nanny can’t make it etc. I also have a great nanny locally. I thought it might be worth foregoing that if we can make a saving but if we can’t I feel like we should just wait as originally planned. Aaargh so difficult to know what to do.

I think that ship has sailed unfortunately. We have been trying to buy all year (thanks, COVID!) and even over the summer it took us 5 months to get to exchange (then vendors decided not to sell and pulled out ). But even when we were making an offer back in November, we were advised we might not make the end of March cut off. I can't imagine things are moving any faster now. Even if you could get a colleague to do your bit, you're relying on everyone else in the chain to sort themselves out.

Realistically though, prices in most places are so inflated at the moment, you'd be better off waiting until they come back down and saving yourself the money that way.

@mindutopia Yes that’s a good point when trying to move up the property ladder. I think DH is just impressed with the price we can get right now and not thinking about whether this is the best market to be buying in