Mortgage Adviser Anna Green, talks through the house buying timeline from mortgage application to offer – including what external factors can lengthen the house buying process:
For England, the house buying process timeline is around eight to 16 weeks. This is a little bit like a piece of string, excuse the pun, because there are many external factors that can either lengthen or shorten this timescale.
From mortgage application to mortgage offer, we’re looking at an average of two to four weeks. Again, there is movement in this as sometimes they can happen in as little as 24 hours.
The legal process of purchasing a property will depend on many external factors such as the length of the chain, how quickly the vendor and the vendor’s solicitor responds to queries, and the complexity of the case in general. You can state a date that you would like to complete on your documents sent to your conveyancer, however, this has to allow a degree of flexibility due to external factors affecting the process length.