How long from offer to completion

[Lottoro]

I understand that it varies massively but I don't know anyone who has completed since lockdown or whether things are up and running again. We have had an offer accepted on an empty house and we have sold. I have instructed a solicitor and survey will be next week. I am wondering whether we might get in by Christmas?!

Probably 8 weeks. Have you asked your solicitor and mortgage advisor what they think? We are in a chain so I am expecting much longer if things work smoothly but the chain can break so I am preparing for worse case scenario. Good luck.

Similar situation to you right now. I have found you have to keep pushing the solicitors...

As a very busy solicitor I can tell you that the vast majority of delays at the moment are due to delays at the Lenders issuing the mortgage offer x

Ignore x

7 months so far...😶

House on the market 5th August, sold in a week, then 3 weeks later had an offer accepted. 6 weeks' since chain completed, still waiting for searches and enquiries but hoping to exchange and complete in October, so maybe 12 weeks total :)

I’m on week 7 and we are now ready to exchange on our purchase. I’m just waiting to see if my buyers have any more queries. I haven’t pushed the solicitors either! I’ve left them to do their job.

I accepted an offer on my parents house at the end of July, exchanged mid September, and complete on Friday - the delay was as my buyer is moving into rented due to the amount of work that needs to be done.
So I'd say you could do it in 8 weeks as long as your conveyancer gets a move on

Thank you. It is helpful to get ballpark ideas even though it varies a lot. Our solicitor was positive that we could be in by Christmas but that was at quote giving stage. Our sale was straight forward and took 12 weeks but their solicitor was useless. I will cross my fingers that the survey and searches are straight forward.

You could very well be in by Christmas :-) There are a few areas where getting a local search is a nightmare at the moment. I'm sure your solicitor will tell you up front if you happen to be in one of those areas.

I'm a month in and all the searches have been done but the mortgage provider is being really slow, not helped by some kind of system problem affecting them offering any mortgages until they fix it. Hoping that gets sorted quickly

You can definitely be in by Christmas if your solicitor is in the ball. For us it was 8 weeks from start to end and very smooth.

We moved in a few days before Christmas. We also received a congratulations card from our solicitor and a bottle of bubbly from the estate agents 😃

Best of luck with your move 💐

On not in

We had an offer accepted on July 16th. No end date in sight. As @user1487194234 said, the delay is from lenders who are currently very reluctant to give mortgages.

A friend has been trying to sell a house and has had three successive vendors fall through this summer because they couldn’t get mortgages. Two had had approval in principle pre-Covid, but it had lapsed.

Trut I assume this was last year ie pre Covid
There are huge delays with mortgages at the moment
If anyone tries to push me on the phone they are unlikely to get through as I will be on chasing up the mortgage

My friend got a mortgage in 4 weeks recently. Another in 5. Both Halifax coincidentally. I’ve no idea if this is longer than normal but it’s not hideous for everyone. We put in for our mortgage last week, valuation is next week. So that bit hasn’t been awful either.

Our solicitor is incredibly on the ball but has said searches are very slow. About 6 weeks 😫 we are in a high case, local lockdown area so I’m guessing that’s having an impact maybe.

But overall, we are aiming for around 12 weeks total from the chain completing. Our solicitor is pushing for first week in November. Chain of 4 completed itself 3 weeks ago. We shall see..

@user1487194234, yes it was pre-Covid. The mortgage approval was time consuming even back then (in part because the bank made a series of errors that took a loooong time to sort and we finally went with another lender) and we had a broker manage the process.

15 weeks exactly for us (just under 4 months I think). Initial offers made 24th June, we exchanged on Monday and we complete next weds. We found our side moved extremely quickly and we were ready mid August but the vendors used god awful solicitors that cocked everything up last minute. Cant wait for it to be over.

We are 2 weeks in to the legals. Our mortgage application, valuation and offer was done by santander in 3 days. I was very impressed. We do have a 22% deposit though.

It has gone a bit quiet on our buyers side so I have chased the agents today to see if they can get an update from her.

Our solicitor has said still probably a couple of months but we really want to be in before January due to school applications.

We are in week 12 at the moment. We complete on our sale next week. As for our purchase, it is to do with our lender and their massive backlog of applications. I have found that it isn't that lenders are reluctant to issue mortgages, they are just seem to have a backlog.

I got my purchase contract through today !

Mine took six months a couple of years ago.

We started the process first week July and moved 11 September, so 9/10 weeks. Small chain though, first time buyers bought ours, our purchase was probate. Could have been quicker but for our sellers being difficult about clearing the property and some searches took a lot longer than normal.

We started our purchase (moved into rented after selling) on the 24th June. Moving into an empty house. Still haven't got an exchange date yet. 14 weeks and counting.

@user1487194234

As a very busy solicitor I can tell you that the vast majority of delays at the moment are due to delays at the Lenders issuing the mortgage offer x

My sis and her man have had a mortgage offer for more than 2 months, literally just waiting on lawyer doing whatever it is he needs to do.