When to order survey and begin conveyancing on house?

[lettie9]

We have had our offer accepted on a house and are so excited. We have a conveyancer working on our sale, and they're ready to start on our purchase whenever we say so. We also have a surveyor we like ready to go.

The seller is viewing houses to buy but hasn't found one she likes yet. When do we go ahead and book the survey? And indeed, proceed with conveyancing? Obviously if it falls through, we will lost thousands. But perhaps it's a good idea to do the survey in case it uncovers something awful? What do people normally do?

Related: has anybody bought homebuyers' insurance and successfully claimed from it?

I didn't proceed with my survey until the chain was complete and our searches came back okay (however, our searches were back in a couple of weeks - I didn't want to risk losing money until I was completely sure everything was proceeding okay)

The normal advice is not to do anything until the chain is fully complete. Precisely so you aren't wasting lots of money on something that doesn't go through like you say.

However it seems a lot of people are doing similar to your thinking about getting surveys done, just in case it uncovers something nasty. My buyer has had one done already even though chain isn't complete, but that was their choice.

I certainly wouldn't be going ahead with lots of conveyancing personally until the chain is complete, but again you take the risk knowing you could lose those costs and have to wait.

Also, just to note we knew what were the main issues which would come up on the survey already (old electrics & boiler) - I just wanted something in writing to fall back on really incase of any future issues etc

Thanks both. @hopefully2021 are you suggesting we go ahead with searches? We weren't thinking of doing any conveyancing at this stage.

I also thought it was normal to wait for the chain to complete, but our buyers have started and ordered the survey, so we're wondering whether to do the same.

I ordered my survey once I had written acceptance of my offer.

If the house needed too much work or had too many issues we may have withdrawn. The sellers had no house then and were still looking so we knew there was no rush. As it was work was needed and the seller needed to sort this to our satisfaction and provide guarantees.

I think order the searches which can take some time - they only cost about £200. Hold off on survey, which costs considerably more, until chain is complete.