How long did it take you from offer to exchange?

[bessr]

We’re 5 weeks in and things seem to be moving slower than I had expected. How long did it take you to exchange?

Almost exactly 4 months. Like, 4 months and a week.
Nothing seemed to happen for ages, then all of a sudden it seemed like everyone wanted to do it yesterday, and it was a mad frantic rush to the end.
I was at the bottom of the chain, in rented, just sitting around with the money all sat in my current account, watching all the madness.

This happened very recently to colleagues of mine. There had been an acrimonious divorce between the couple who they wanted to buy the house from.
The Mr of the couple sat in the house alone for months, and refused to engage until the courts forced him to.

I wonder if it's the same person? Northamptonshire?

No not Northamptonshire. The ExH hadn't lived in the property for a number of years, and by all accounts didn't actually need the money from the house sale as he owned other property. His stubbornness cost him tens of thousands in court costs though

I just don't understand what takes so long. In Aus when offer is accepted timeline is fixed. 30, 60 or 90 day settlement with significant financial penalties for either side not completing at the agreed time. Surveyors and conveyancing works within these time frames. Whole process is much less stressful as a result.

Quite often it's down to dithering and / or incompetence. E.g.

• A buyer in the chain does everything sequentially rather than concurrently - waits for mortgage offer, only then instructs searches (which can take weeks to come back), raises loads of enquiries (sometimes ones that have already been answered), only then instructs survey (which can take weeks to book & get report on), followed by further tests for sometimes unnecessary things that the surveyor has added to report to cover their arse
• Vendor takes ages to respond to anything, doesn't have paperwork in place for any work they've done, hasn't been honest about some other aspect of the property e.g. they don't actually own that bit of land they were happy for the EA to include in the particulars
• Solicitors don't do due diligence so issues arise right at the end (this is happening in our case), they have too heavy a workload so take ages to work on your file, lack of comms, going on holiday without warning anyone. Often this work is done by junior people who are inexperienced so issues only come to light when the file is reviewed by the boss

I like the idea of the fixed timeline as it focuses minds. Some people are not good if there isn't a hard deadline and can only focus if they think it will imminently collapse and they will lose money. This is why quite a few property chains end in ultimatums as it's the only way to get all parties focused on achieving an outcome. There's a lot of drift in chains and unfortunately, some people seem quite content with that, even though you wouldn't expect it to be in their interest. I think it's human nature that some people are driven and get things done whilst others meander through life waiting for things to be done to them.

About 8 months in an enormous chain that was split twice- once by us who were selling a house each and then again further up the chain. I swear the stress of it all has taken years of my life but miraculously- it completed.

5 months each time we have bought (3 properties)
5 months for each of the younger generation of our family in more recent years (6 different properties)
3 months for the one who bought off a company where the property was advertised saying "You need to be able to complete within 28 days".

5 months but had a boundary dispute issue to resolve which was what took the time.

6 months. We were 2 days off of having to reapply for the mortgage offer all over again! It was the most stressful 6 months of my life, and the reason why I'll be leaving my current house in a box.

About 3 months.

I'm reflecting on the fact that estate agents, conveyancing solicitors and successive governments have somehow conspired to create a process so painful that almost nobody wants to repeat it. No wonder the housing market is so stagnant. Why would anyone want to move unless they had a burning reason to do so?

I can't really see how it's going to improve as the parties involved seem to have no interest in changing anything. It makes me wonder how estate agents are making enough money when there's so little on the market and so many chains collapse.

4 months and then less than a week to completion.