How long does conveyancing take?

Conveyancing timeline, stage by stage

These are the stages of a freehold purchase with a mortgage in England and Wales, with realistic timings rather than best cases.

Stage	Typical time	What decides it
Instruction, identification checks, draft contract	1 to 2 weeks	How fast you return forms and identification
Searches ordered and returned	1 to 6 weeks	The local authority, and nothing else
Enquiries raised and answered	2 to 4 weeks	The seller’s solicitor and the seller’s memory
Mortgage offer issued	2 to 4 weeks	The lender and the valuation
Report on title, signing, deposit	1 week	You
Exchange to completion	1 to 2 weeks	The date everyone in the chain agrees
Stamp duty return filed	Within 14 days of completion	A statutory deadline
Registration at HM Land Registry	Weeks to months	The application queue

Add four to eight weeks for a leasehold flat. The extra time is the management pack, which comes from the freeholder or managing agent, and which nobody in the transaction can hurry.

The four causes of conveyancing delay

Searches. Turnaround varies enormously between councils, from a few days to several weeks for the same document. Ask your solicitor to order searches on day one rather than after the survey, and ask what the current turnaround is for that authority.

Enquiries. The buyer’s solicitor asks questions arising from the contract pack and the searches. Each round takes a week or two. Sellers who answer their property information form carelessly generate two extra rounds.

The mortgage offer. The valuation, the underwriting, and any condition the lender attaches. A mortgage in principle is not an offer, and the gap between them is where a lot of the waiting happens.

The chain. A four-property chain moves at the speed of the slowest transaction in it, and nobody in the chain can exchange until everyone can. This is the delay your own solicitor cannot fix, and the one people most often blame them for.

Land Registry search and registration times

Two different things get confused here.

Searching the register happens at the start, and it is fast. HM Land Registry says an application it needs to handle manually takes one to two days, and a search of the index map two to three days. Your conveyancer searches the register before anything else, because everything in the transaction depends on what it says.

Registering the transfer happens after completion, and it is slow. That does not put your ownership at risk: legal ownership rights are secured from the moment the application is received rather than when it is processed. Where a delay might put another transaction at risk, an application can be expedited for free, and HM Land Registry processes the vast majority of expedited applications within 10 working days.

The 14-day stamp duty deadline

The stamp duty return has to be filed and the tax paid within 14 days of completion, and there are penalties and interest for missing it. Your solicitor normally handles both from the completion money, but the obligation is yours, so confirm it has been done.

A purchase week by week

A freehold purchase with a mortgage, from an accepted offer, assuming nothing goes wrong.

Week	What is happening
1	Memorandum of sale from the agent, both solicitors instructed, identification checks, searches ordered
2 to 3	Contract pack arrives from the seller’s solicitor, mortgage application submitted, survey booked
3 to 5	Searches come back, valuation carried out, enquiries raised
5 to 7	Enquiries answered, mortgage offer issued, report on title sent to you
7 to 9	You sign the contract and transfer, deposit sent, completion date agreed through the chain
9 to 10	Exchange of contracts, and the date becomes binding
10 to 12	Completion, keys released, stamp duty return filed within 14 days

Leasehold adds the management pack, ordered in week one and often arriving in week five or six, and a second round of enquiries about service charges, ground rent and the lease terms. That is the four to eight weeks.

Why leasehold adds four to eight weeks

Three things, none of them under your solicitor’s control.

The management pack. Ordered from the freeholder or managing agent, priced anywhere between £200 and £500, and delivered when they get to it. Sellers can order it as soon as they accept an offer rather than waiting for enquiries, which is the single most useful thing a leasehold seller can do.

Lease terms. A short lease, a ground rent that doubles, or a missing management company each generate advice, negotiation and sometimes an insurance policy or a lease extension.

Notices after completion. Notice of transfer and notice of charge are served on the freeholder afterwards, each with a fee. They do not delay completion, but they are part of the job and part of the bill.

What to do when a purchase stalls

Ask one question, in writing: which of the four causes is the transaction waiting on today. A good firm answers it in a sentence. The answer tells you what to do next.

• Searches, wait, or ask whether a personal search or search insurance is acceptable to the lender.
• Enquiries, ask which specific enquiry is outstanding and who owes the answer.
• Mortgage, chase the broker or the lender, not the solicitor.
• The chain, chase the estate agent, who is the only person with sight of the whole chain.

If the answer is vague, that is its own information, and the complaints procedure exists for firms that go quiet. Choosing a firm that publishes its stages and timescales in the first place is the cheaper fix, and the price the firm published under the transparency rules has to include those key stages.

Conveyancing timings in Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland runs on a different structure and usually a shorter one. The seller commissions a Home Report before marketing, so the survey exists before an offer. Offers are made through solicitors, and the transaction becomes binding when missives are concluded, often within a few weeks. The date of entry is agreed in the missives, which removes the English uncertainty about when completion will happen.

Northern Ireland works closer to the English pattern, under the Law Society of Northern Ireland’s Home Charter Scheme, which sets what a solicitor must explain and when. Timescales resemble England and Wales, and the searches are ordered from different bodies.