How long did your house buy/sale process take?

[Desmondo2016]

Just being nosey really!

We have cash buyers and our vendor is moving in with family so minimal chain.

We're a week in since offers made and accepted. We had an over asking price offer on day 1 so were very lucky. We have our valuation survey done and our mortgage offer issued. We've paid for our searches.

Our buyers aren't having a survey on ours. So we're really now down to the time it takes searches to come back and then the inevitable back and forth communication between solicitors etc leading up to contracts being exchanged.

What was your timeline? I'm hoping we can be moved in 6 weeks from house going on the market! (My last experience was 19 months so hopefully this will be better!)

It’s very much a case of “an army marches at the pace of its slowest man.”

Given your scenario, and assuming no unexpected surprises, then 6 weeks may not be unrealistic.

Typically a transaction takes an average of 12 weeks, but few would be as straightforward as yours appears.

Respond to enquiries swiftly, keep good communication with both your buyer and seller, either through the EA or direct, and keep all fingers and toes crossed. There is a little bit of luck and good fortune involved!

Best of luck

In my area local searches are turned around in 3 working days. At the other end of the spectrum I’ve heard some local authorities can take as much as 12 weeks.

Most local authorities display on their website how long searches take, might be worth checking

We're 8 months in with the same sized chain as you have. Hoping for exchange within the next couple of weeks. Has been a very frustrating process!

Come into the house buyers/sellers thread! In property/DIY thread.

When we were ftb we bought of someone going into rented and from offer accepted to moving in took 5 weeks (including mortgage). And I thought that was slow! How naive I was!

You don't want to ask me, Monday marks the start of week 28

Our last sale only took six weeks from going on the market to completion, but we weren't buying as we were emigrating. So it can be done.

4 weeks offer to exchange on my recent Sale and 5 weeks offer to exchange on my recent Purchase.

However, both were chain free (I exchanged on my Sale without having found a property to buy) and I paid almost double the normal legal fees to have a Senior Partner handle both transactions.

Both transactions had complexities and both were time critical (my buyer made the offer on the condition they could be in by Christmas and my purchase was in competition with two other proceedable buyers). I decided it was worth the extra legal costs to ensure nothing went wrong.

5 weeks from offer day to moving into new house day.

3 months

No chain 12 weeks

I think alot of it boils down to the speed of the solicitors. We had a very straightforward chain (4 houses in total), but due to various "bank holidays" ( this was the solicitors favourite excuse) and other setbacks, from selling to moving it took over 6 months. Our sellers house they were planning to buy, failed the mortgage valuation, which was unforseen and they had to find another property which didn't help, but these things do happen unfortunelty.

We sold to ftb and bought from someone who was selling to pay for nursing home fees and it took 13 weeks. The majority of the hold up was our buyers and their mortgage company, they kept coming back with demands because one of the couple was self employed and they wanted more paperwork to prove his income.

2 years!

14 weeks (neither of us in a chain), but Christmas was in the middle which slowed things down a bit.

5 months no chain :(

Long time for short chain. Selling and not buying so no chain my end. My buyers are selling to first time buyers so just the three of us and we complete next Friday having accepted my buyers offer in October. Ok so we’ve had Christmas in that but even so it’s been ridiculously slow imo.

We are 6 months in.
No chain. 🙄🙄🙄
Christmas was in the middle to be fair, but still loooong

Over 6 months. I was selling to first time buyers but then there were 5 in the chain above me, all needing to sell to fund their onward purchase. The chain became six as one of the couples split up so they both needed new places. One of the solicitors then went away for a couple of weeks in the middle of everything seemingly leaving no-one to pick up their cases in their absence so everything stalled. Never again!

We complete on Thursday (hopefully). We had our offer accepted Jan 3rd so 8 weeks.

We have no chain, vendors are buying somewhere with no chain but they’ve cancelled our completion date twice in the last 2 weeks because they’re querying boundary walls on their ongoing purchase. It’s going to take a while so they’re willing to break the chain and are moving in with family next week so we can complete.

Our solicitor is brilliant and so is theirs, so the legal stuff was really quick. We haven’t waited more than 3 days for anything. The mortgage we used the Natwest online system and never went near a branch. From application to approval was 2 weeks because they requested a lot of info.

If our vendors had had somewhere to move to straight away we could have been done and dusted in 3 weeks!

When we bkugjt 4 years ago we were FTB and the prooerty was no chain and theyd moved already. It took 14 weeks.

Second time we bought a house we were in about a 4 property chain. That took 16 weeks.

This time were in quite a long chain and I dread to think how long!!

Good luck x

Bought *

Exactly three months. We were cash buyers and they had no chain.