How long between accepting an offer and setting an exchange date?

[GoingToInfinity]

We put our house on the market the second week on August and we were very lucky to accept an offer within 24 hours. We had already found a house we liked and we had an offer accepted within a couple of days.

We're slowly making progress with all the paperwork, both us and our buyers and our respective solicitors have been quick and efficient so far, but it's taken a long time to get anywhere with the solicitors working on behalf of the people we're buying from. We've finally had some paperwork through from them last week, although there's still more that our solicitors have requested.

So far no one in the chain has requested a specific date for exchange or completion. At what point do we do this?

Optimistically it would be lovely to move by the end of October, but realistically this probably won't happen, and we don't have a specific need to move quickly.

Our very short chain took from June to last week! Normally I would say 2-3 months you need to hassle the agents and solicitors. Are your searches in? Our local authority had a backlog which slowed everything down

We put an offer in on 25 May and completed and had keys 10am on 10 July 👍

Offer accepted 11th May. Only seller and ourselves (buyers) in chain. Seller already moved out. No date yet!!!! Awaiting an issue to be resoved by Land Registry that they were informed of in May............
Losing the will to live

There are three in my chain- I’m friends with my buyer and we have decided between is that we want to complete on 4 October! Still haven’t exchanged even though friends buyer also agreed to the exchange 😳😳 buyers buyers solicitor won’t answer calls or emails from either her clients or my buyers solicitor! They are a bloody nightmare 😡 anyway we agreed sale early July but I can’t redeem mortgage til 4 oct hence completion date 😁

National average from contracts (first instructing a solicitor) to completion is 6-8 weeks freehold and 12-14 leasehold.

Our very short chain took almost 4 months. Our buyer had a shit solicitor and wasn't chasing him up so it dragged.

Offer was made in March and we finally completed in November!! 4 in the chain but we had delays due to leasehold paperwork needing to be sorted by our buyer and various holiday commitments by 2 of the parties.

@StressyDressyHeels
No way is the average for freehold, 6-8 weeks! More like 11/12!

@Mildura

It’s the national average. I’m a property solicitor and have dealt with many hundreds if not thousands. This will include ones that have gotten through in a week (it can happen), auction properties that can’t go over 28 days etc. It’s an average.

When we sold our flat it was just us and a FTB, still took 4.5 months, thanks to local searches and a useless solicitor. We just had an offer accepted on Monday, hoping it will be quicker this time, at least it's a different LA this time.

@StressyDressyHeels

I own a firm of estate agents, and have dealt with a few thousand transactions over the past 25 years.

The number of properties sold at auction is so low in comparison to the traditional method that the period of time taken for the transaction to go through will not affect the average.

A transaction can go through in a week, it could happen in one business day theoretically, although it's tremendously rare.

An army only marches at the pace of its soldier, same with a property transaction. Whatever the slow component is will determine the speed. Sometimes it will be a LA search, other times a mortgage offer, or could be any number of other variables.

@Mildura

I was using the auction as an example. It’s an average, as you said there’s many variables...

I don't think I've ever completed in less than 3 months from acceptance of offer. We're in the process now and having accepted offer early-mid-June with only a chain of 3, we finally exchanged mid September and completing early October.

we were us in rented cash buyers empty house so no onward chain, 8 weeks from offer to moving in

It took ours 4 months to go through.

Have your vendors found somewhere yet? Or is the house empty? This will determine the length of the transaction. We were in a chain over the summer which broke partly because our vendors changed their minds After 6 weeks they had only managed to fill in a fixtures and fittings form so they were never fully committed to the sale. I am not suggesting that this is happening here with your vendors but it would be worthwhile to get their agent to chase them directly.

6 months for mine. Chain free on both sides too, was a nightmare as the house hadn't been sold in over 60 years. Solicitors were bloody awful too, 47 questions raised, some they refused to answer

The house I an now in was 7 weeks. Though to be fair I out the offer in 2 months before that. I spoke to the seller, they had not found anywhere. I told them as my sale was due to divorce I didnt want to proceed until that sale went through (had, had an offer) because I didnt want to mess them about if exh was difficult. But once I had the money I wanted to proceed quickly.

Their house had been on the market for a while, they hadnt found anywhere so were happy. I kept them upto date on my house sale.

So from the day the money hit my account I instructed solicitors. And 7 weeks later I moved in. It did include a threat from me and the woman I was buying from, to both pull out, as someone further up the chain kept pissing about. Or rather their solicitor did.

But it's taken as long as 6 months before.