How long to sell a house after offer accepted?

[GamerLlama87]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone can give any sort of ballpark timescale really!

Selling a house my ex partner and I own (he currently lives there), neither of us is buying another place so there's no onward chain and the person who is buying it is a first time buyer, so no chain their end either! She already has her mortgage offer too.

Just wondering if that might mean the process could be relatively quick? And what even is "quick" when talking about solicitors?!

We accepted an offer this morning now so I'm obviously super excited but don't want to get ahead of myself if it's still gonna be a bit of a drawn out process. I've waited 5 years for my knobhead ex to finally sell the place so I almost can't believe it!

 

[Snippysnips]

Depends on the solicitors an lawyers to be honest, we have been at the top of the chain twice when it come to selling our old places an my brother was also top of the chain when it come to selling his old place an it varied with us, one place took around 2 months, another was 3 months, my brother was almost 8 months which was crazy, but really it's down to how fast they will move, it can go from a few weeks to months unfortunately

 

[Kim Mild]

I don't think there is an answer to how long it will take.
A lot of it depends on how long searches for the buyer take . And then the solicitors as some are notoriously slow.
All the paperwork and any questions will have to go to both you and your ex so make sure you are both on the ball with making sure this is sorted as soon as you can

 

[Clickbait]

I sold a flat last year and bought a house. My buyer was a FTB with mortgage in principle; my seller was not purchasing anywhere so minimal chain. We were desperately trying to hit the end of September deadline to recoup a little saving from the end of the stamp duty holiday.

I was able to speak to my seller directly as he’d shared his contact details when we viewed the house, my agents were able to relay messages to/from my buyer. The latter was a bit highly strung and naive to how things worked with a leasehold flat which added some time on to the process.

I turned round all requests within 24 hours, got a surveyor organised quickly etc. but you can only do what you can do, sadly you also need to rely on your seller to be organised and aware of what needs to be done in a timely manner, two sets of solicitors for whom this is not a priority and other agencies (land registry) who don’t appear to have SLAs in place to get things done. As with many companies Covid is still being used as a reason for lengthy delays.

By taking a lead in coordinating and being on this daily I got ours turned around in 3 months. In reality for that period of time (with the Covid backlog and Stamp Duty deadline) that was quite miraculous but it caused me a great deal of stress!

You have even less of a chain, so I would say 3m could be a ballpark estimate. I wish you good luck with it, it must be exciting after such a long wait to be seeing light at the end of the tunnel!

 

[haydx1999]

My mum completed in 5 weeks with a first time buyer / no onward chain & I completed a chain of about 4 who were ready to go and completed in 8 weeks.

 

[101d]

When I bought my house we were FTB, the owners were moving out to rent so no chain. The process took about 2 months.

 

[WilmaHun]

I work in conveyancing, this question is almost a bit "how long is a piece of string" to be honest.

Though, what I will say, with no onward chain, and using a FTB, you are in a good position for things to move quickly. As your buyer already has a mortgage offer that is also positive. The main thing you'll be held up by is the searches - as your buyer is getting a mortgage they'll obviously need these. The local searches can take a couple of weeks, if not more, to come back. The speed of local searches generally just depends on the local authority. My local authority generally takes about 10 working days, however the local authority for the town next to mine can take anything up to 4 weeks so it's hard to say really. Drainage and water searches tend to be a bit quicker.

After searches it will then depend on whether they want a survey - getting that booked in etc, and any enquiries they need to raise.

Hope it goes quickly for you!