Offer accepted, what next?

[ItsAllTLAsToMe]

Hurray, our offer on our first house was accepted today .

I'm going to find a solicitor tomorrow, and I need to find a surveyor as well I think.

Can anyone offer any advice / tips? How long might it be until we get to move in?

We had our offer accepted last week in May and completed mid-August. That was for a chain free straight forward purchase.

Oh, such a long time Birds!

Actually, I just re-counted, it's not that long.

10 weeks ish, it felt like forever but we exchanged after 8 weeks so really not that long. Have you made an appointment to sort out your mortgage?

We complete on Friday on our new house, eight weeks, two days. We complete on our current house in a couple of weeks, six weeks, one day. Are you having a mortgage because you could get the home buyers report done by the bank? The EA will be able to recommend local surveyors and solicitors though. Make sure to get a few quotes!

Yes, we'll get the ball rolling again with our mortgage broker tomorrow.

I've started a thread in Money Matters about who should be named on the mortgage - so far, only DH has been assessed for the mortgage decision in principle.

. I think .

Will look at that thread then :)

You need to be on the mortgage if you are to be named on the deeds

Ah, okay. I should be on the mortgage then too.

We had offer accepted on 15 Dec and exchanged today and that was with the Christmas break AND a hold-up while we had some stuff looked into that came up with survey. So definitely doesn't have to take long.

Both times we've bought the bank has arranged the survey - and I'm pretty sure it was compulsory to do it through them at least one of the times. There may be a mark-up, I guess, but I'd be surprised if it was very much.

We had to get the basic survey through the bank so just paid extra to upgrade it. I say paid, they forgot to charge us

When we moved a few years ago we managed it in 7 weeks but that was with a cash buyer for us and no upward chain either and with me harassing our solicitor to keep it moving

Other tips would be:

1. Keep hassling everybody in a nice way. If you don't hear from them, ring solicitor and agent once a week and say "Hello! Is there anything I need to be doing?" It's so annoying to stew for ages waiting for news and then when you finally ring up get told "Oh, we've been waiting for you to do xyz thing that we've never told you about before."

1. Get a solicitor who is happy to do stuff by email. Unbelievably some still require every conversation to be on paper!

1. Share tasks between you. I was mainly in charge of talking to solicitor, DP was in charge of agent, and we cc'd each other on emails. I went through the first big bundle of stuff from solicitor and pulled out our queries, he went through the second.

1. If any renegotiation takes place (whether because you need to ask for money off due to survey, or vendor suddenly wants more), never rush into decisions on the phone. It's fine to say, "Thanks, we need to have a think about that."

would day 1 be considered as being when your offer is accepted?
I'm waiting patiently for a completion date on my house. Not even sure when we had out offer accepted now, seems ages ago.

Its 5 weeks exactly since our offer was accepted. We've done everything we can, its just a case of waiting now. We've even signed the contract but left completion date blank. We are waiting on 3 searches which were ordered 10 days ago. Surely they won't be much longer?

The chain is complete, so I'm hoping to get a moving date this week, if we're really lucky.

ooh we have just had our offer on our first home accepted too
we have handed in our id/confirmation of funds and solicitors details to the agent.
got an appointment with the bank to follow up our mortgage in principle and book the valuation survey.
after the valuation has been done our solicitor will begin the searches.
we are not having a further survey done though as my df is a builder and my boss is a civil engineer and property developer (so they will be inspecting for me before any money is handed over) but so far all my friends have said they regret not having a FULL survey done on their houses.
im cacking it about going back to the bank - worried they won't like the proof of incomes they have asked for (even though i have checked on the phone twice) and the whole thing will fall apart im probably being irrational though
good luck

Thanks everyone, it's good to have an idea about how long this will all take! And thanks for the tips too .

By the time we complete on 28th March itwill have been 12 weeks. Agree with everything maddog says. I called everyone once a week at the start - am now calling every two days as we exchange on friday. If i hadnt lots of things would have been missed and held things up for even longer. Noone ever tells you what is going on or will happen next you need to keep asking!

Bonkers way in England. So much uncertainty. In Scotland after an offer is received missives (contract) can be completed within 2 weeks making it legally binding with a move in date a couple of weeks later. It doesn't always go that quickly but never 12 weeks.

I agree gregs .

Lol

I'm in Scotland - it took 7 weeks - the offer was accepted mid-October and we moved in start of December..

The local authority search is back and its about 100 pages long! It's going to take me forever to read it. I'd best get started I suppose.

Sounds like some bedtime reading, kid . Good luck.

I read enough of it. There was only one part which worried me to begin with. it was that 'the property is in a radon affected area, as between 1 and 3% of properties are above the action level'. But, the report states no further action required so I guess we don't need to do anything.

Everything else is in order. Reports about drains location and responsibilities look fine. Nothing that we particularly need to know I thought.