How long until completion from this point?

[Tusktusk]

Mortgage offer in place
Level 3 survey done
Conveyancing just starting
Chain of 2 - I am not selling a property and our vendors are buying a vacant possession.

How long do you think before I can move in? I’m impatient 😁

How long is a piece of string?…..

Maybe 3 months, but could be anything. Depends a lot on whether both sides have decent conveyancers.

Good luck!

Leasehold or freehold?

You can look up the national average for either.

Could be weeks or months. Last time we sold and bought, we were due to exchange in late July and eventually moved in October. It was one thing after another and so frustrating.

House I’m buying is freehold. I don’t know about the one the vendor is buying.

Someone said today it would be a minimum of 4 months. I was hoping 4 weeks! That’s why I came here to ask.

Have the sellers got finance in place and have you discussed completion dates with them? Has their legal work started yet? If you’ve both had surveys done and funding is in place and both properties are freehold, then 4 weeks is possible. Not likely though, unless you and the sellers are both pushing hard. Speak to the sellers .

4 weeks is very unlikely. Searches can take 4+ weeks! I'm guessing more like 3-4 months minimum from where you are currently?

Our straightforward purchase last year took 5 months from offer accepted to moving in.

No chain, mortgage offer in hand, survey was done about 4 weeks into conveyancing but showed no issues.

Came here to say same about conveyancers - don’t use an online company and refuse to deal with the buyer if they do. My buyer (1st time, no onward chain) did and it was the worst experience I’ve had in recent years. They use the next available call handler and nobody wants to be responsible for exchange - but you don’t know that till you research online, and with hindsight. Each week they just throw back another random query to stall the process.

I'm in similar position and going nuts. Our freehold purchase is empty, we've done searches and survey and are cash buyers, just waiting on results of couple of straightforward queries. Our buyer is a FTB, mortgage presumably in place and searches hopefully requested, had their level 2 survey 2 weeks ago but we've heard nothing from that yet - this is by far the worst bit, we're terrified of being gazundered at the last minute.

Earlier this year, we sold an inherited property. Mortgage in place, no chain as buyer living in mobile home temporarily, no survey, no queries from searches. Sale took 16 weeks!!

Want to do more packing but daren't in case it's another 2 months!

When we bought a chain free property with a mortgage in 2022 I fought tooth and nail every day to get things done ASAP. The instant a piece of paperwork came to us it would be hand delivered back. It was so stressful and excruciating- but we completed in 10.5 weeks. I believe it would have easily taken 4 months if we’d not been so diligent.

When we moved family home last year, we sold our house in 2 weeks (April 2025). However, despite my best efforts (daily), we were in a chain of 5 houses and one solicitor lower down would simply not work. We tried to exchange/complete multiple times and one day we were all meant to move and this solicitor simply disappeared after lunch (no warning) and it all collapsed. We eventually completed in mid-October 2025 (6 months after selling). Unfortunately, it’s a volatile market and 1 bad solicitor can ruin lives! I won’t even go into the day of the move where my children and I almost had to sleep in a hotel!

Don't discount online companies. Look at their reviews. I work for an online company in a support role having been a fee earner for many years. Online only can be just as good as high street firms.

We used local conveyancer, so we could sign things then and there, and take ID to the office, rather than posting back and forth.
Ours was a similar situation to yours and took 3 months exactly from start to finish, and that was over Christmas (and during a lockdown). Our estate agent and solicitor were both brilliant.

Ours took from first week of Feb to mid June, no chain!

Oh yes this is crucial!

Our conveyancers were absolutely brilliant - local firm and very responsive. The longest parts for us were waiting for action from the mortgage company, and the searches.

I bought this time last year. Was renting and a cash buyer. Bought the house three doors down which was empty. So no mortgage needed. Didn’t have a survey done. Still took 11 weeks and that was me on at the solicitors constantly. I was losing the world to live. It should have been so simple.

hang on in there. It will happen

I bought 11 years ago, freehold house. From offer to moving in was two months, even though part of it was over Christmas. Selling the same house now and it is far slower, even though no chain at all either end. We are both using proper solicitors, not online firms, but I’m finding mine, at least, pretty poor (even though it’s the same one that my seller used when I bought the house).

I’m not expecting to complete until at least 4 months after I accepted the offer.

No one can answer that question. Anything could happen.

Came here to say same about conveyancers - don’t use an online company and refuse to deal with the buyer if they do.

This has not been my experience at all. We completed on Monday in a chain of 7, my online conveyancers were outstanding - amazing reviews on Trustpilot and recommended by my equally fab independent Estate Agents. They were shit hot and turned everything around the same day, had our sale and purchase ready in 5 weeks shame the rest of the slow Solictors in the chain held us up. They are NOT all the same.

I’m a bit ahead of you with a similar size chain. We have two online solicitors (including ours) and one local solicitor. The local solicitor is by far the slowest of the three.
All enquiries so far have been through an app so no sending in the post or dropping things in the office. Clearly the contracts will be sent to us but otherwise our online experience has been exceptional. In fact, online reviews are outstanding and we have two people assigned to our case so communication is brilliant.
Our final searches are due back this week so I am hoping for an exchange by the end of August

Pleased to hear that your experience is good! My point about the online conveyancers (our buyer used conveyancers not online solicitors) was that it didn’t really show up in the earlier stages - things were progressing. It was that each Friday (requested by them) the exchange didn’t happen. It became so awful for me after five weeks - especially as they wanted the same completion date so it was getting nearer and nearer and I couldn’t plan because every Friday a new random query would come back to my solicitor. By the 5th week, the exchange didn’t happen because the buyers demanded a full deep clean of the (4-bed, 3 reception) house. I burst into tears! I was the only person left in the house, hardly any furniture left, it was immaculate! The estate agent called the buyers who were furious as they hadn’t asked for that at all. It was one of the call handlers at the online conveyancers, in another bid to stall. The process took everything out of me, it wore me down. The thing is, my solicitor (so patient!) charged a fixed fee, they charged my buyer by the hour so the wasted money. I’d read reviews online by this time, people warned that the last thing was the company didn’t always register the sale with Land Registry. This happened in my case too.

The thing is, there's the original type of online conveyancers who have very few experienced staff supervising a load of people the firm has put through their basic training program and the newer type where everyone is experienced and it's just easier and cheaper (no large office) to be entirely online. The firm I work for currently is the latter. All the fee earners are consultants. They bring in their own work so they have to be excellent in order to get the repeat business.

Reassuring - how would the average person know (apart from the obvious which is reading reviews online, clearly my buyer didn’t as I read them with increasing despair and alarm)?

@MinnieMountain sorry I seemed to tar your profession but at least we’ve (I’ve) established from this that this sector can be very good and efficient, maybe the other type will die out?

@Emmasblackboardlook up the firm on the SRA or CLC websites depending on whether the firm is described as a solicitors or licensed conveyancers. All the qualified individuals have to be listed, so generally if it appears to be a big company but there's not many qualified people it's best to avoid them.

I have worked with some great unqualified people but they tend to be people who have worked their way up at high street solicitors.

Depends on lots of things.

But this time of year stuff can move pretty slowly.

Conveyancers, surveyors, in fact the whole world have holidays too.