How long from survey to completion?

[Amethyst24]

I accepted an offer on my flat in May. EA told me a couple of weeks ago that a completion date has been set by the buyer's mortgage lender of 4 August (there's no chain - buyer is a FTB and I am renting).

Then yesterday I found out that the survey is only being done on Friday. Is this about right, or does it seem quite late in the process if we're meant to exchange in 2 weeks?

Depends how quickly they'll get the result to the vendor and their solicitor and their mortgage company. Ours took about 4 weeks after the survey to do that. We exchanged immediately after that and competed 2 weeks later.

if the offer was accepted in may, it seems rather a long interval till now for your buyers to get their survey done, but perhaps they were starting the mortgage application process from scratch.

exchange occurring 2 weeks after survey is entirely possible - rather depends on the efficiency of the the surveyor, whether any issues are thrown up (and the length of the subsequent negotiation), and the efficiency of their mortgage lender.

if it helps, we went from making an offer to completion in a period of 1 month, including getting a bank valuation survey (for the mortgage lender) and a full structural survey for our own benefit.

if your buyer rides their solicitor, mortgage lender and the surveyor, it can have a considerable impact on the speed at which things get done.

It is a a bit of a how long is a piece of string situation as you are always relying on other people.

The house we are in now was 4 months from survey to completion. The one before was 5 weeks. Both were straight forward chains of 3 with no issues at all. One person being lax be it home owner or a professional involved slows the whole thing!

Thanks - I thought it seemed a tad ambitious but we'll see.

This thread has given me hope! Our survey is being done next week (23rd) having had the offer accepted last week. Ideally we'd like to complete on the 23rd of August. The seller is moving in to rented so hopefully no hold up there. It sounds like it might just be doable?

How long do searches take though? I'm hoping our solicitor is very on the ball

Friends of ours bought their first house last year. They had a mortgage in principal before they made an offer. The EA were a complete pain in the
Phoning every day wanting to know when the survey was being done, that started three days after the mortgage application. The thing with banks and building society's now is they are doing far more checks, I think it's taking longer for FTB. The vendor put the house back on the market at one point. That being said they made the offer early June and moved in September. I think the EA cause a lot of the problems by pushing which causes normal folks to worry.

the motivation of the buyer is so critical. we bought a repossession, so time was of critical importance (the property remained on the market and actively marketed with free disclosure of the exact amount of our accepted offer, encouraging further higher offers up to exchange of contracts).

knowing this, and wanting to get to exchange as quickly as possible, i was on the phone ALL the time - every day chasing the surveyor, the bank, my solicitor...its impossible to know for sure, but i reckon i probably knocked about 50% off the usual time to completion by making such a monumental pain the the backside of myself.

if you have a motivated buyer who really wants your property, there's no reason why they couldn't do the same.