How long will it take to complete?

If you've just had an offer accepted then you're looking at, bare minimum, 12 weeks to complete.

Solicitor is (prob rightly so) vague and won!!!8217;t even give estimate

In layman's terms, this means there is still too much outstanding work to start giving out estimates. Your solicitors have no idea when third parties will respond to your buyer's buyer's management pack or have any control over how quickly your vendor/vendor's solicitors will supply requested information. It is not only the seller who has to respond to queries, the freeholder/management company have to as well. Some responses may need to be reported to the lender. Management Companies are notorious for tardy responses and requesting huge amounts of money for notices etc, and won't issue them without payment up front.

You are in the very early stages of your onward purchase. If your offer was only accepted a week ago, then your solicitor may not have even received the draft contract pack yet, or if they may only have received part of it. Your solicitor cannot raise enquiries if he hasn't received the protocol documents and there is no way of knowing until all these are received, how many enquiries your solicitor may need to make and whether he approves the contract. Don't forget, enquiries have to sent from your solicitor, to the seller's solicitor, then to the vendor, who returns responses to their solicitor, who then sends responses to your solicitor. Unless everyone responds by email immediately (and the responses are satisfactory), it can take several weeks for the enquiries to be done.

You will also need searches done on your purchase. Local Authority searches can take several weeks to come back and your solicitor may need to raise more enquiries based on search results.

There are two leasehold properties in your chain (yours and your buyers), which will certainly add some time to the transaction.

My son is a FTB purchasing a flat, now 4 weeks since his offer was accepted. My firm are acting for him and we are doing everything we need to be doing as soon as it comes in. Nevertheless we still haven't received the management pack from the sellers and we only received the Lease and F&F, PIF and LIF forms from them on Monday. We did receive a draft contract and official copies of the title pretty quickly, so have ordered searches, however Local Authority search is still awaited and majority of enquiries only just raised due to waiting for the additional documents to be supplied by the seller.

I don't mean to sound so negative, but the fact you have your survey booked and have obtained the management pack quickly is only a small part of the process. Your management company need to respond to leasehold enquiries, because the buyer's solicitor will need to corroborate your responses with theirs. Likewise your buyers will be doing the same with their buyers.

While it may only take another 3-4 weeks, the likelihood is that the 12 weeks mentioned above is probably more realistic.