Offer has been accepted, now what? Never done this before!

[Weighly]

Our offer was accepted on Friday. We had to give the estate agent our solicitor’s details in order to take the house off the market so we contacted a few solicitors and told one we would like to go ahead with her. She hasn’t been in touch since.

When do we apply for the mortgage? Does that come after the surveys to say the house is ok?

Our seller is still looking for a house to buy so do we wait on everything until they’ve found one? Who will let us know they’ve found one, the estate agent?

If the surveys take 4-6 weeks and the mortgage application takes 2 weeks then why have we been told by the estate agent things are taking 12-14 weeks to complete?

Please can someone give me a list of in what order we should be doing things? Thank you.

I would get your mortgage sorted now. The offer stands for 6 month.
The estate agent should tell you they’ve found somewhere.
It’s the sols that take so long, they have searches etc to do which take ages.
If you have everything ready on your side and keep on at your solicitor everything should go smoothly for you.

Do you not have a mortgage adviser? They should be able to tell you what to do next.

If you don't have one well worth getting in touch with one / DM me if you need any recommendations.

Martin Lewis from Money Saving Expert has a really good downloadable guide to buying your first home- it will go through all the stages in detail and give you an idea of what questions to ask when etc.

12-14 weeks is probably unrealistic if your seller hasn’t found somewhere. They could end to buying somewhere with a chain. Are you hoping to make the stamp duty holiday?

You need to pay your solicitor a holding fee for them to even look at your file, so do that to get things going.

Survey is often quicker than 4-6 weeks. You might be thinking of searches, which the solicitor does, and they are slow at the moment as local authorities are overwhelmed.

Congratulations on buying your first home!

The first thing that will happen is the estate agent sends the memorandum of sale to you, your solicitors, and the people you are buying from. You need to get your mortgage application done ASAP, and a survey booked in. You will also need to pay your solicitor £250-£500 to start searches, set up your file.
You then wait, for the mortgage application to be approved (send it to your solicitor) for the survey to come back (send it to your solicitor) and for the solicitor to get the searches back and a draft contract through from the buyers solicitor. Once these have been done you then have any questions/queries about the property to be raised with the seller - legal issues, boundary issues, dates of maintenance etc etc.
This is all happening up and down the chain.

Thank you for the MSE tip, I’ll go and have a look at that.

So it sounds like I need to be chasing up the estate agent and the solicitor this morning then?

The solicitors quote was the best part of £2k. I’m guessing that at least some of that will be have to be paid even if for some reason the sale doesn’t go through?

To be quite frank I’ve been feeling sick with nerves all weekend!

The MSE guide is great, thank you @Nightmanagerfan

you need to ask the solicitor:

• what is included, what is extra, what will still be chargeable if the purchase falls through
• how long they take to reply to emails/phone calls/letters
• what are their deputising arrangements if your named contact is ill/on holiday.

if the answers are not satisfactory, go somewhere else. Treat high street old family firms with caution (bad case of golf course on Friday), treat super cheap conveyancing body shops with even more caution. A few years back, now, but my sale and (separate) purchase were well handled by a firm in a completely different part of the UK and they knew about returning calls and deputising. As I recall the named contact was actually ill on the day of completion but I only found out afterwards because they had a system for deputising. It can be done!

Our solicitor is on a no completion no fee basis, yes we have had to pay out to start the file, for searches and for a survey but if we don’t complete we don’t have to pay the solicitors, there are several like this now so worth looking around, it’s gave me peace of mind.

Yes to getting your mortgage agreed. I am surprised the EA even let you view without van AIP in place!

However, I would wait until the vendors have an offer accepted before investing significant sums in the survey and searches. You won’t lose time because the vendors will be needing to do these too and nothing can happen until everyone is at the same stage.

But tell the EAs this and make sure they are happy to halt viewings / marketing now that your offer is accepted.