If you've exchanged/completed recently, how long did your searches take?

[1word]

Hi,

I'm just trying to get an idea of how long the local authority searches might be taking at the moment. We've been informed there may be delays due to the backlog of folk who were rushing to complete before March 31st, which is what we expected- but our buyers were recently told they'd take up to 20 weeks, which seems excessive!

If you've exchanged or completed recently, would you mind sharing how long your searches took to come back? We are in the East Lindsay district if anyone else happens to be.

It was 6 weeks for us last year in East Anglia.

About 6 weeks in Dec / Jan - a London borough.

Your solicitors and Estate Agents should know how long they are taking locally.

26 working days for East Lindsay district, see below:

search-acumen.co.uk/covid-19-coronavirus

Our solicitor has told us approximately 4 weeks from sending searches off to them being returned. North East England

Never got them all, got an indemnity insurance instead as otherwise we could have been waiting a few months (probably an extreme case, but Hackney Council got cyber attacked and remain some disarray)

So if it is ages, there are ways round it.

We had an Offer accepted late October. Just about to exchange. Everything took ages.

This blows my mind. 48 hours when we send them away. Scotland though.

Your solicitor should have been given an estimated date when they submitted the search.

Thank you everyone, it's good to hear that none of the timescales above compare to what's been given to our buyer.

Regarding solicitor and estate agent knowing, everyone has said something different, which is where the confusion has come from. Our agent said 8-10 weeks, buyers agent said 20 weeks. Their solicitor massively over promised them (to get their business I imagine) and assured them we'd be completing in a couple of weeks time.

You're local authority website should give you current waiting times @1word
Ours is 8 days.

@HumourReplacementTherapy

You're local authority website should give you current waiting times *@1word* Ours is 8 days.

I did have a look yesterday but I couldn't find anything. There is a good chance I was being a bit sleep deprived and dense though so i'll have another go

search-acumen.co.uk/covid-19-coronavirus

You may find this helpful.

For us it was spot on. Said 30 days and they took 30 working days.

@Dogsandbabies

https://search-acumen.co.uk/covid-19-coronavirus

You may find this helpful.

*@Mildura

26 working days for East Lindsay district, see below:

search-acumen.co.uk/covid-19-coronavirus*

Thank you both. I can't find anything on my local council website, so hopefully those quoted numbers will be about right. Anything is better than 20 weeks

5 weeks, due to complete Wednesday!

We didn’t do searches but took indemnity insurance instead, as we were buying in a very well established 1920s development with share of freehold . As it turned out the vendors took so long that we had to break the chain to secure our sale just before Christmas last year . We went into rental for 3 months
So, .it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d done the searches and they had taken ages !

It’s utterly ridiculous how long some councils take. For our sale, it took four weeks to turn the searches around (Dacorum council), our purchase will take up to 12 weeks (South Derbyshire District Council). Sigh...

House searches in Hertsfordshire took less than 10 calendar days this month. I was pretty impressed.

Some of these are crazy! 4 days in Leeds.

@Jammiedodged

Some of these are crazy! 4 days in Leeds.

4 days! What an absolute dream that would be!

For what it's worth, the searches have been commissioned by our buyer, not us. I just wanted a better idea of how long to expect that part of the process to take as we've gone chain free to ease the process along. I'm trying to get quotes for storage and the difference between 2 weeks of storage and 20 weeks equates to quite a lot of money (hence initial panic!)

Can I ask where in Herts? We’re waiting for searches to come back from Dacorum.
I’ve seen a variety of time from 30 odd working day to 18 working days from the website up thread.
10 days would be brilliant!

@ItemOneInYourFolder We are currently selling in Dacorum and the searches our buyers requested took about 20 working days I think. Definitely faster that where we are buying!

@StrongTeaDropOfMilkNoSugar thank you.
That’s really good news!
Hope yours arrive soon

Strangely right beside you in threerivers. It was less than 10 days.

Following! I have an accepted offer and am anxious about everything going through quickly!