How long from acceptance of offer to completion for freehold purchase with chain?

[eloisie]

All is in the title! I wonder how long it took for you from the date of an offer being accepted to completion (freehold purchase with a chain)?

For me, exchanging tomorrow with completion on 9th Feb, I think our offer was accepted formally back on 10th November Two houses in the chain….we’re selling to a couple in rented and the vendor from whom we’re buying has no onward chain. Nothing too complicated and probably could have been a tad quicker had my buyers solicitors been more swift.

Having said all that, I work in an estate agent and know that sales can be much slower, based on various factors such as searches, surveys and all kinds of nonsense!

I've bought 3 times. (Only chain was the 3rd time)
Weirdly, each time the offer was accepted in February and each time completion was in July.
I've been involved with / known about 5 younger family members buying houses in the last 3 years, all ftbs and 3 of them into empty properties. 4 of them were all between 5 and 6 months. The one was buying off one of those companies that had bought it off the vendor so no back and forth and that went through in under 3 months.

Zoopla puts the average time from offer accepted to completion at an average of 18 weeks (4.5 months). That average though obviously includes all the non chain sales so it will be a longer average for those in a chain. Home Selling Expert estimate its 4 to 8 months at the moment. Looking at how many sales are failing in the current times is worrying - it seems between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 are not completing.
As always, plan for the worst case scenario and hope for the best ! Hope yours goes smoothly.

ours will be long. We are bottom of the chain as family member moving into ours so not selling. But our vendors are downsizing and their vendors are upsizing and so on for what seems like ever. offer accepted end of November and chain still not complete. We are not moving out of the area so no massive rush but it would be nice to be in by the summer.

Be prepared for anytime between 4 and 8 months. It's a ridiculously slow and inefficient process from all angles, searches/ poor solicitor communications/ slow sellers with little info/ mortgage providers. The estate agents do get involved and try to hurry it up but it's like pushing a huge boulder uphill.

We sold our house in 3.5months, we broke the chain to ensure our sale went through.

Buying our new house should have been easy too but took 4.5months due the to whole slow process. How can things take months in 2024?

4 months - we broke the chain to do this

The chain free one took 5 months (and 2 failures).....

Four months and one week. Offer accepted end of Sept, due to complete today! Three transactions in the chain, it was four but the one at the top dropped out. Good luck!

Offer accepted 8th Sept, we moved in on the 12th Dec. That was with a couple of issues along the way. It helped that it was a short chain and me and our seller were very efficient (read anxious).