The legal stage
Between offer accepted and exchange, your solicitor does the legal work, searches, enquiries, title checks. This typically takes 8-12 weeks. You'll feel like nothing's happening. A lot is happening.
This is the stage where most buyer frustration lives. You've found the house. You've got the mortgage offer. But somehow it takes another two months before you can move in. People assume their solicitor is slow. Usually they're not, they're waiting for searches from councils, replies from the seller's side, or your lender's underwriting.
The best thing you can do at this stage is respond to anything from your solicitor within 24 hours. The single biggest source of delay is buyers sitting on enquiries.
What's actually happening
Searches. Your solicitor orders Local Authority, Environmental, Water/Drainage, and sometimes Chancel searches. These reveal whether the property has issues like planned developments nearby, contaminated land, or unusual ownership obligations. Councils can take 2-6 weeks to return them.
Enquiries. Your solicitor raises questions with the seller's solicitor based on the searches, the title deeds, and the survey. Replies come back, more enquiries follow, until everything is resolved.
Mortgage underwriting. The lender's underwriter is checking everything, your finances, the property valuation, the title. They can ask for additional documents at any point. Send them whatever they ask for, fast.
Most of conveyancing is solicitors waiting for someone else. Councils returning searches. Sellers' solicitors replying to enquiries. Lenders' underwriters reviewing files. You can't speed any of those up, but you can absolutely slow it down by being slow with your own responses. Don't be the person holding up your own purchase.
When you've worked through everything in this stage, mark it complete to track your overall progress.
Found this useful? If you'd rather talk it through with a real broker, book a free chat with DS Financial, the regulated mortgage adviser.
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