How long did your longest purchase or sale take (looking at a record)?

annetheman

Hi all!

To distract myself from the misery that is my first purchase (of a leasehold flat), I've been digging around for info on the time taken from offer acceptance to completion - the national average being almost 3 months.

I've read some interesting stories of nightmarishly long and tense exchanges, all very interesting, some utterly confusing! It seems a series of things going 'wrong' usually adds a handful of months to a sale, but generally there is 1 overriding factor/reason behind the delay, which has a knock-on effect on the rest of the pieces in motion.

For me, this is the infamous and elusive EWS1 form... So 9 months to the day since I started my purchase, I'd like to find out from others:

How long did your longest purchase or sale of a property take, what was it and what was the main factor behind the delay?

[Deleted User]

Sale of my house, 7 months, the delay was the buyers solicitor.

k3lvc

Purchase 9 months from acceptance of offer to completion - divorcing couple with 3 attempts at court from husband abroad to try and block the sale

kazwookie

Sale of house about 9 week

Purchase of the new one well very long story owing to lockdown 1, which we knew nothing about until in the car heading to new property, it ended up at 3 months, very stressful and loads of £££

Chop-D

Longest sale 10 months! Made the mistake of using an online agent and buyer used their conveyancers 🤦

Rambosmum

Sale of ours was November to September, so 10 months. Longest purchase was April to November, so 7 months

ProDave

Is this the sale process after you get an offer to completion?  Or time from putting on the market to getting a sale?

nicmyles

Eight months from offer to completion (we were purchasing). Divorcing couple, plus some idiot further up the chain who did not disclose that he needed to sell two properties (one of which was tenanted) to have the necessary funds.

Slinky

6 months from offer to completion on a cash purchase of a probate property where probate had already been obtained. Entire delay was down to the vendor's inability to clear the house out in a reasonable time.

UnderOffer

First home 12 weeks, second home nearly 13 weeks at point of exchange but chain collapsed and eventually went through at 7 months 😬, vowed never to move again. 

NortheastEA

morning - lets see is anyone can beat sale agreed on 30/6/2014 with completion on the 18/9/20 - same buyer, same price - issues were it was a deceased estate with an housing association and the council having a registered interest along with an unregistered title and the seller had no will and no close relatives .......