How soon should we apply for a mortgage offer?

[Madmog]

It will work out well to apply for our mortgage two weeks after we had our offer accepted. Does this sound okay? I don't think we'll be holding things up as our buyer's survey hasn't been done on our house and that was negotiated a week before.

We had a mortgage in principle in place before putting offer in -vendors like that. It depends where you live but in areas of high demand eg London it pays to be one step ahead of the competition! For me personally, when I was selling my old place, I had two offers for full asking price within 3 days of it going onto the market and I think if a buyer had said they hadn't spoken to a bank yet I would have been reluctant to accept that particular offer. But it depends on the area like I said and also the vendor's situation - if they are part of a chain they may be more accommodating.

The other thing is - paperwork for a mortgage takes ages and a lot of chasing, the sooner you get started the better.... And the sooner you move into your dream house (fingers crossed for you)

Thank you for your reply. Luckily we've already got a mortgage in principle (agents we've viewed the house through made it clear they would expect to see one if we put an offer in) and we've been somewhere else this week for comparison.