Turnaround time 16 weeks plus? How long for you?

[iloveyoubutilovememore]

So we’ve accepted an offer on our house and had ours accepted on another. We are purchasing privately and are ‘friendly’ with our seller who has been keeping us in the loop re solicitors and surveys etc. mortgage offer in last week and searches sent off today.

Estate agent called me this morning to check in and I asked her what sort of timeframe we’re looking at. The house we’re currently in was our first home so I’m new to the buying and selling process. She said a minimum of sixteen weeks is what I should keep in mind, anything else is a bonus! Jesus I didn’t realise it took that long. I’m also confused because our neighbour recently sold and said the searches came back within the week! Guessing there’s many hurdles we have to pass?

We are in a chain of four, first house is empty and not buying anywhere, second is the one we are buying, third is us and fourth are our first time buyers.

how long was it for you?

A year. The chain did fall apart once as we close to the original 16 weeks.

Last time it was 12 weeks to the day. Depends on the solicitors IMO

A chain of 4 in 16 weeks would be a great result. It could easily be double that.

We made the offer first week of April and it’s still nowhere near completing. No idea how many weeks that is but I’ve decided to view other houses this weekend

Ours has been fairly straightforward, chain of 4, the odd delay and people taking holidays etc. 20 weeks so far....should be exchanging this week but also thought that last week Iol.

I also think it's down to personal circumstances, are the others in the chain in a rush or are they settled and prepared to wait etc

10 months and our chain of 4 collapsed on the day of exchange due to crap solicitors further down the chain! We were due to move into a vacant property, first time buyers at the very bottom. The middle two has the most useless solicitors in the world, the kicker is all the houses were with the same branch of estate agent and they did nothing to try and keep it together.

UK purchase 14 weeks. Irish purchase 5 weeks. Both cash sales no chain.

Recently took 14 weeks to sell an empty flat to a cash buyer.

Back and forth with fairly basic questions can take 2 weeks, indemnity policy for missing document from 1935 that no one has noticed in multiple sales, another 2 weeks

Chain of 3 and we exchanged last week 6 weeks to the day of our offer being accepted. Searches came back within a week and our mortgage came through within 5 days. We are in Scotland though so not sure if that changes things.

10 weeks in, first time buyer currently in rented, no chain, empty property as it's an ex rental. My solicitor will be sending out enquires this week (I hope). I thought it would be 12 weeks max but things have been painfully slow. I'm hoping it will be done by week 14 but who knows. It seems to be the solicitors slowing everything down, they really have no urgency and don't seem to care how long it takes. Unfortunately there's only so much chasing you can do and it doesn't seem to help anyway. Frustrating process.

@iloveyoubutilovememore Controlling the bits you can is the best advice, by that I mean return documents and queries quickly, plus if email cannot be used, physically take documents to and from your solicitors - this not only saves time but it builds a rapport with the solicitors as you are a face they know, rather than someone at the end of the telephone or email.

If you have queries, remember everytime you ask your solicitor a question they are likely to send a letter or email to the other parties solicitor, it all takes time. So make sure you only ask questions which are important.

You can chase on searches, mortgage companies etc if possible but they are the bits which sometimes you just need to go with the flow timescale wise.

Make sure you have every bit of paper (for example planning permission etc) available from the very beginning and sent to the buyers solicitor. I would also pay for an electric inspection (about £100) and have boilers serviced for the house you are selling, as it will save time when the surveyor issues a survey which says"could not check plumbing, boiler, electrics so recommend the buyer investigate them all".

Finally always be prepared to compromise especially with completion dates in order to find mutually agreeable dates rather than one party not being flexible and demanding certain dates, it always causes ill feeling.

Chain of 6 took started at the end of Febraury and then exchanged 2 weeks ago and moving this week.

Was the estate agents a national chain? We had the same issue, although managed to keep the second chain together but estate agents just couldn’t give a shit about actually progressing the sale. All houses were with the same agent. It also nearly fell apart on exchange because of the “in-house” solicitors of the estate agent being used.