how long does exchange take?

jase888

We are meant to be exchanging today for the house we are selling according to our estate agent yesterday but we haven't heard anything from our solicitor yet. We tried emailing and calling but shes busy.

How quick is the exchange? As in will it only take 20-30 mins to do? Just we need to tell our other solicitor dealing with the house we are buying to exchange on the same day as our mortgage lender needs 5 working days before completion for some reason. As we haven't heard anything yet we cant tell our solicitor to exchange for house we buying and looks like it will late on in the afternoon.

We only found out yesterday we were exchanging as our buyers have been waiting on some money for months. Grrrr stressful times!

Surrey_EA

The process of exchanging contracts is really only a telephone call between the solicitors, so 30secs, 60secs - not long.

You need to make sure the solicitor acting on your sale liaises with the solicitor acting on your purchase - this is why most people use the same solicitor for both sides of the transaction, to avoid such complications.

Almost all mortgage lenders require 5 working days between exchange and completion to make sure the money is available on completion day.

G_M

You're mad! Why use 2 different solictors?

There is a risk you will Excange on the sale but the purchase may fall through. By using the same solicitor, he'd ensure that both took place simultaneously, and if one were delayed/fell through, he'd not Exchange on the other.

Stop phoning. He'll call you if/when he's Exchanged. Meantime he keeps getting messages from you via his switchboard interrupting his attempts to Exchange!

Surrey_EA is right up to a point - it's a phone call. But it may be a whole series of calls. In a long chain, the solicitors all have to ring each other (maybe 5 properties? 10? 15? all changing hands simultaneously?) to ensure that each one is ready, so that's quite a few phone calls back/forth.

And it only takes one solicitor to find a last minute issue, or one client to suddenly announce they want to wait a week because of sickness) for the whole chain to collapse........

PasturesNew

While you're on the phone to the solicitor - the other solicitor who is trying to get hold of them to exchange is being told "Sorry - line's busy, can you call back?"

cloo

My experience has been an hour or two of calls seem to happen and then it's confirmed. It should definitely happen within one working day. I took the option of distracting myself as much as possible on exchange days so that I'm not waiting by the phone!

DumbMuscle

I'm in the same boat today - on tenterhooks waiting for confirmation that it's all gone through!

Vixstar

We're waiting too. Starting to convince myself it won't happen today

jonathanrolande

The exchange itself is just a minute or so but takes longer as all paperwork needs to be in order first and sometimes the solicitors just miss eachother on the phone for a while – frustrating but common!

DumbMuscle

Mine just went through - Hope the others who are waiting got theirs as well

Vixstar

Ours went through at 4.