How quick can a house sale be processed?

[Carmenere]

As a follow - on from my previous thread, we have to move soon. My question to mumsnet is what is the quickest possible timeframe that a house can be purchased in. The situation is that we are cash buyers and will be looking for a property that is chain free. Anyone here know how fast a sale can be processed. Are there special conveyors who you can pay to speed things up?

Depends on how careful you want to be. When you say you are cash buyers, do you require a mortgage? If you do, then the lender will require certain procedures to be followed, such as a local search, valuation, etc.

Do you have a mortgage offer in place? A local search can be speeded up if you are prepared to pay for a personal search to be carried out. However, many sellers are now providing seller's packs, which should include a recent local search.

Also, will you be having a survey conducted? That may take a little time too.

Apart from that, the whole process should be fairly quick if there is no chain involved.

No we fortunately don't need to get a mortgage (parents are investing the cash, we will rent privately from them). A survey should be fairly fast as my dad is an architect, and I'm sure they would be happy to pay for a search. Basically what I need to know is that, would it be possible for a straight forward sale to go through in say 6 weeks?

Almost certainly. The things which usually hold up purchases are the local search (at the mercy of the local authority unless you have a personal search done - however your vendors may have a recent one in their seller's pack) and the mortgage, plus any structural survey. You can possibly speed up the survey by paying the surveyor more to bump yours up their workload.

Do as much work as possible in advance and the rest could easily be done in much less than 6 weeks.

Thanks freckle . You are very generous with your wealth of knowledge and you have really eased my troubled mind this evening

We made an offer and moved in to our house in just under two months, that was with no chain but we had to get a mortgage. The searches had been done already so it was just surveys and things the mortage people had to do and it was them who took time to make the appointments to do this (we where told this was a fast sale) - hope this helps.

we went from offer accepted to moving in, in 5 weeks. we were homeless at the time as we went ahead with our own sale, and the house we were originally buying was taken off the market. it can be done but you have to chase things every couple of days, i was on the phone regularly to keep things moving.

The local authority search is generally the thing that takes the longest. 2-4weeks. and if you do a Homebuyers survey for the property you want to buy, they are pretty quick, which ever one you do. eg; either cheap or thorough! If you are full cash buyers you will not need to get a mortgage approved. so there is the possibility to be in a new home in 4 weeks...unless you haven't put an offer in on a prperty yet-obviously all of the above rests on the fact you have had your offer accepted on the (chain free) prperty of your dreams!! good luck- it can also drag on for months for lots of different reasons, so be sure to have a very very good solicitor. hope that was of use.

YOu can do it in about 4 weeks I think - that is super fast though!

We exchanged in 3 weeks, completed in 4 weeks, but untimately it depends on how efficient people (solicitors etc etc) are

With our first house we moved in exactly 3 weeks after first viewing it! We were first time buyers, no chain and property was empty. So it can be done. Good luck!