How to speed up process to exchange?

[Everywhichway2018]

I am looking to exchange asap and want to know the best way to speed up the process ???

Only us and our buyer - we are going in to rented, they are keeping their current property and renting it out. Buyers finance is sorted, surveys done, searches due back any day. Our solicitor sent 'first contract' weeks ago to their solicitor but so far no enquiries.

What can I do to get the process moving quickly? I have emailed my EA and asked her to push but other than that is there anything else I can do?

The main things to do are to respond to any queries or requests for info/documents as fast as possible, and to keep chasing everyone.

When you say the buyer has their finance 'sorted', what do you mean exactly? Is it they have had a mortgage valuation and they have received the final mortgage offer, or they just have an AIP and are going through the application process?

Most sales, even fairly straightforward ones, take a minimum of 6 weeks, frequently longer. the average is around 11/12 weeks.

Hmm, not much you can do really. Have they let you know what timescales they want to work to, cos if not, and they are thinking a different date to you, then nothing you do will have any effect anyway.

You can pay more (well, they can) for the searches to come back faster but my solicitor aid he would not recommend this as they would not be as extensive and not guaranteed by the council but just the insurance of the firm that did them.

Their solicitor will raise the enquiries once the searches are back. The local search is usually the one that takes longest, up to a few weeks in some areas.

The only thing you can really do is respond to everything quickly.

Nag!

You can exchange and complete at the same time - might it be worth making that suggestion to your solicitor and/or buyer?

Ring your estate agent and tell them to start earning their money by chasing the solicitors / buyer up. Phone call much more likely to produce action than an email in my experience. Even better, call in to the EA office

@Mildura the buyer has their mortgage offer in place. We are already 10 weeks in to the process so hopefully it's just the final hurdles now.

@VanGoghsDog this Friday's date was the date given early on but their mortgage took longer than expected so it certainly won't be then.

Who is it best to nag? The EA or the solicitor? I'm not sure if my solicitor charges for emails - no mention of it in the contract. I think it is a fixed fee unless there is unforeseen work involved but some mumsnetters have me worried.

Chase the EA first of all. Get them to hurry up the buyer and their solicitor. No enquiries 10 weeks in to the process is a bit poor, and to not have searches back suggests they didn't apply as early as they might have done.

As VanGogh says, search results vary between local authority areas wildly, might take 3 days in some places, 3 months in others.

if no-one is moving then exchange and complete could be done same day, but it causes immense extra stress. Redirect, bills, utilities...

it won't save much in the long run. If they have a lazy dinosaur of a solicitor (and many old high street firms are just that) there's nothing you can do.

When we last moved i swapped mobile numbers with our buyers. Everytime, for example, our solicitors said they had raised a query, i texted buyer and she chased and vice versa.

The Estate Agent handling the sale for the vendor has a progress chaser. She has been extremely helpful in chasing an exchange date. We have found the vendor to be tardy in responding and not giving full answers. The latest one said we should have checked something ourselves when we visited in January! It should have been simple for the vendor to answer the qeustion - they live there! Our exchange may happen soon, but we have been pusuing this since January with, originally, an attempted completion for Easter. The vendor said that was not a problem back in January. However, they did not sort out a mortgage (not enough information supplied we understand) and we suspect they probably did not find anywhere to buy until late in the day. Not that they told anyone! Some peope are just difficult and evasive. We still do not know if they has paid the management charge up to date! Such a prolonged drag!!!!