The home buying process in England and Wales, step by step

The home buying process in England and Wales takes around seven months on average, according to Rightmove’s timing data, from the day you start viewing properties to the day you collect the keys. Roughly 66 days go on finding a property and agreeing a sale, with the remaining five months spent on conveyancing, mortgage processing, and exchange.

The process runs through a fixed sequence of stages, each with its own tasks and decision points:

• Save your deposit and check your credit score
• Get a Mortgage in Principle
• Search for property and attend viewings
• Make an offer and negotiate terms
• Instruct a conveyancer and commission a survey
• Complete your mortgage application and property searches
• Exchange contracts
• Complete and move in

Statistic: Rightmove’s guidance puts the average sold-to-completion period at roughly five months, but that figure assumes a straightforward chain. Add a buyer or seller further up or down the chain and that number can stretch considerably, which is why the sections below focus as much on timing risk as on the steps themselves.

Key Takeaways

The home buying process typically takes several months in England and Wales, and moving fast between offer acceptance and exchange is the single biggest factor within a buyer’s control.

Table of Contents

• What are the steps to buying a house in England and Wales?
• How do lenders assess mortgage affordability?
• When should you instruct a conveyancer?
• Which type of survey do you actually need?
• How long does the average home purchase actually take, and how do chains affect it?
• What costs beyond the purchase price should you budget for?
• Your milestone checklist for buying a house
• When does it make sense to use an independent buyer agent?
• Buy with confidence: get expert guidance at every stage
• Editorial take: what most timelines get wrong
• Sources
• FAQ

What are the steps to buying a house in England and Wales?

Buying a home is not one long task. It is a series of smaller, sequential decisions, and getting each one right before moving to the next is what keeps the whole transaction on schedule. Here is the process in the order most buyers experience it.

1. Save your deposit and set your budget

Before you start browsing property portals, work backwards from what you can realistically save and borrow, not forwards from the houses you like the look of.

Check whether you qualify for any government schemes aimed at first-time buyers in your area, as eligibility rules and availability change from year to year. Prioritise clearing existing debt and building a clean six-month bank statement history over squeezing out an extra few hundred pounds of deposit. Lenders scrutinise spending patterns closely, and a history free of unauthorised overdrafts or gambling transactions matters more than most people expect.

2. Get a Mortgage in Principle

A Mortgage in Principle (also called an Agreement in Principle) is a lender’s estimate of how much they would lend you, based on a quick review of your income and outgoings. Estate agents in England and Wales routinely ask to see one before booking a viewing, because it filters out buyers who cannot actually afford the property.

Most Mortgage in Principle checks use a soft credit search, which does not affect your credit score and is not visible to other lenders. A small number use a hard search, which does leave a mark, so ask the broker or lender which type they are running before you agree to it. Get this sorted before you start viewing seriously. It typically takes minutes to a few hours online.

3. House hunting and viewings

Once you know your budget, the search itself is where most of that average 66-day window gets spent. On viewings, look past the staging: check for damp patches, uneven floors, cracks around door frames, and the state of the roofline from outside. Ask the agent directly how long the property has been on the market. A property that has sat unsold for months often signals either an overambitious price or a defect that put earlier buyers off.

Book a second viewing before making an offer on anything you are serious about, ideally at a different time of day. Morning light and evening light reveal different things about a street, noise levels, and how a house actually feels to live in.

4. Making and negotiating the offer

Submit your offer in writing, through the estate agent, and be specific about what you expect included: fitted kitchen appliances, curtains, light fittings, garden sheds. Verbal understandings about fixtures and fittings are a common source of disputes later, and putting it in writing now avoids a fight at exchange.

Under GOV.UK’s guidance on offers and negotiations, no offer is legally binding in England and Wales until contracts are exchanged. That single fact shapes almost everything that follows: either party can walk away right up until exchange, without penalty, which is exactly why the period between offer acceptance and exchange is the most fragile part of the entire transaction.

5. Post-offer actions

The moment your offer is accepted, several things need to happen at once rather than one after another:

• Instruct your conveyancer or solicitor immediately, and provide ID, proof of funds, and your Mortgage in Principle straight away
• Commission your survey, choosing the level of detail appropriate to the property’s age and condition
• Submit your full mortgage application, which triggers the lender’s own valuation
• Ask your conveyancer to order local authority, environmental, and drainage searches as soon as instructed

Buyers who overlap these tasks rather than waiting for one to finish before starting the next tend to shave weeks off the process, according to Rightmove’s guidance. The MHCLG’s official How to Buy guide makes the same point: instructing a legal representative the day your offer is accepted, and handing over scanned documents immediately, lets searches and contract queries start before your mortgage offer even arrives.

6. Exchange and completion

Exchange of contracts is the point at which the sale becomes legally binding on both sides. Before you get there, you need your mortgage offer confirmed, all searches returned and satisfactory, your deposit funds cleared and ready to transfer, and buildings insurance arranged and live from the moment of exchange, since you carry the risk on the property from that point, not from completion.

Completion day itself usually follows exchange by one to two weeks, sometimes longer if the chain requests it. On the day, your solicitor transfers the remaining balance to the seller’s solicitor, and once funds are confirmed as received, you get the call to collect your keys.

How do lenders assess mortgage affordability?

Lenders look at your income, existing debts, credit history, and monthly outgoings to calculate what they call your affordability, typically a multiple of your income adjusted downward for existing commitments. Expect to provide at least three months of bank statements, your last two to three years of P60s or self-assessment returns if self-employed, proof of your deposit source, and photo ID.

The deposit size does more than determine your mortgage size. A larger deposit tends to unlock better interest rates because it moves you into a lower loan-to-value bracket, where lenders view the loan as less risky. Someone putting down a smaller deposit will usually see a higher rate than someone putting down a larger one, even with identical income.

A Mortgage in Principle is not the same as a formal mortgage offer. The Mortgage in Principle is an estimate based on limited checks, arranged in minutes or hours. The full offer comes only after the lender has reviewed your full application, verified your documents, and completed its own valuation of the property, usually taking two to six weeks depending on the lender and how complete your paperwork is.

That lender valuation is worth understanding on its own terms. It exists purely to confirm the property is worth what you are paying for the lender’s own risk purposes, not to check the condition of the roof or the wiring. GOV.UK’s guidance is explicit that this valuation is not a substitute for an independent survey, and buyers who skip a proper survey because “the bank already checked it” are the ones most often caught out by expensive repairs after moving in.

• Check your credit report for errors before applying, three months ahead if possible
• Avoid opening new credit accounts or large purchases in the run up to your application
• Use a mortgage broker if you are self-employed, have irregular income, or a complex credit history
• Ask any broker whether they run a soft or hard search before agreeing to a Mortgage in Principle

Pro Tip: If you are self-employed or have income from multiple sources, a whole-of-market broker often finds lenders that high-street banks won’t, because their underwriting criteria for non-standard income are usually more flexible. It costs nothing upfront in most cases, since the broker’s fee is typically paid by the lender or built into the product.

Statistic: The MHCLG’s How to Buy guide recommends having your documentation ready before you even start speaking to lenders, precisely because incomplete paperwork is one of the most common causes of a delayed mortgage offer.

When should you instruct a conveyancer?

Instruct a solicitor or licensed conveyancer the moment your offer is accepted, not after you have signed a mortgage offer. Waiting costs you real time, since conveyancers cannot begin searches or draft contract queries until they are formally instructed and holding your ID and proof of funds.

Compare conveyancers on both price and regulation. Licensed conveyancers are regulated by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, while solicitors are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority; both are legitimate routes, and the right choice usually comes down to price, availability, and whether they specialise in the type of property you are buying (leasehold flats carry more legal complexity than a straightforward freehold house).

Your conveyancer will order several searches on your behalf:

1. Local authority search — reveals planning permissions, building regulation issues, and any proposed road schemes nearby
2. Environmental search — flags flood risk, contaminated land, and subsidence history
3. Drainage and water search — confirms how the property connects to public sewers and water supply
4. Mining search (where relevant) — checks historical mining activity that could affect ground stability, common in former coalfield areas

Any one of these can surface a genuine legal risk, from an unauthorised extension with no building regulation sign-off to a planned development next door that would affect value. Your conveyancer’s job is to flag these and, where necessary, negotiate a resolution with the seller before you commit.

Exchange of contracts is the legal moment the sale becomes binding, and it requires several things to be lined up simultaneously: your mortgage offer finalised, searches back and satisfactory, buildings insurance ready to activate, and your deposit funds cleared in your solicitor’s client account, not just in your own bank.

Because nothing is binding until exchange, the risk of gazumping, where a seller accepts a higher offer from someone else after already accepting yours, sits entirely in this window. There is no reliable legal remedy against it in England and Wales, which is exactly why speed matters here. The best protection is simply moving faster than a rival bidder could: instruct your conveyancer immediately, respond to document requests the same day, and keep your survey booked as early as possible.

• Instruct your conveyancer on the day your offer is accepted, not the day your mortgage offer lands
• Respond to every document request from your solicitor within 24 hours where you can
• Keep your seller’s solicitor informed of your progress to maintain momentum on both sides
• Ask your conveyancer directly what could delay exchange, and revisit that list weekly

Which type of survey do you actually need?

A mortgage valuation and a survey are not the same document, and confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes a buyer can make. The valuation confirms the property is worth the loan amount for the lender’s benefit. A survey checks the physical condition of the building for yours.

There are three main survey levels, and RICS provides the professional standards behind each:

• Condition report — the most basic level, flags obvious problems but offers no advice or valuation, suited to newer conventional properties
• Homebuyer report — checks for damp, structural movement, and other significant defects with practical advice, suited to conventional properties in reasonable condition
• Full structural (building) survey — the most thorough option, covering the entire structure in detail, essential for older, listed, or unusual properties, or any home showing visible signs of concern

If a survey flags a serious issue, such as subsidence, damp, or an unsafe roof, you have four realistic options: renegotiate the price to reflect the cost of repairs, ask the seller to fix the problem before completion, commission a further specialist inspection (a structural engineer for suspected subsidence, for instance), or walk away entirely, since nothing is binding until exchange. Most survey reports return within one to two weeks of booking, though a full structural survey can take longer depending on the surveyor’s availability and the property’s complexity.

How long does the average home purchase actually take, and how do chains affect it?

Seven months is the benchmark Rightmove reports for the full process end to end, but that figure hides enormous variation depending on one factor above all others: the chain. A chain forms whenever your seller is also buying somewhere else, and their seller is buying somewhere else too. Every extra link adds another party whose mortgage, survey, and conveyancer all need to align with yours before anyone can exchange.

Rightmove’s own analysis of chains identifies chain fragility as one of the leading causes of purchases falling through or dragging on for months beyond expectation. A single slow conveyancer or a buyer further down the chain who fails their mortgage application can stall everyone above and below them.

• Instruct your conveyancer and book your survey the same week your offer is accepted, not after your mortgage offer arrives
• Provide every document your solicitor and lender ask for within 24 to 48 hours
• Ask early whether flexible completion dates or protective arrangements for your deposit are worth discussing with your conveyancer if the chain is long
• Treat radio silence from anyone in the chain for more than a few days as a signal to ask questions, not wait it out

Being chain-free, either as a first-time buyer or a cash buyer, removes one of the biggest sources of delay entirely and can cut months off the timeline. If you are selling and buying together, our guide to managing both transactions simultaneously covers how to keep both sides moving in step.

Pro Tip: Ask your estate agent directly, before you offer, how many parties are in the chain above and below your prospective purchase. It is a fair question, and their honesty (or evasiveness) about it tells you a great deal about how smoothly your purchase is likely to run.

What costs beyond the purchase price should you budget for?

The property price is only the headline figure. Several other costs land at different points across the timeline, and underestimating them is one of the most common budgeting mistakes first-time buyers make.

• Deposit — due at exchange, typically 5% to 25%+ of the purchase price
• Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) — due shortly after completion; check GOV.UK’s SDLT page for the exact current thresholds and rates, since these change and depend on your buyer status
• Conveyancer fees — usually payable in stages, with a final balance due around completion
• Survey fees — payable upfront when you book, before the report is delivered
• Mortgage valuation fee — sometimes bundled into the mortgage product, sometimes charged separately
• Mortgage arrangement fee — often addable to the loan itself, but check whether that is the cheaper option over the mortgage term
• Removal costs — payable around completion week
• Buildings insurance — must be live from exchange, so budget for the first premium before you actually move in

Set aside a contingency fund on top of all this, ideally a few thousand pounds, for the costs that catch buyers off guard: a specialist survey follow-up, a search that needs repeating, or a delay that pushes a rate lock expiry. Confirm with your solicitor exactly when your completion funds need to clear, since bank transfers, particularly larger ones, can take longer than same-day if sent late in the day or across different banking systems.

Statistic: Because SDLT thresholds and rates vary by buyer status and location, never budget from a figure you have seen quoted elsewhere. Check the current GOV.UK tables against your specific circumstances before finalising your budget.

Your milestone checklist for buying a house

Keeping momentum through each stage comes down to knowing exactly what needs doing before you move to the next milestone.

1. Before you offer: get your Mortgage in Principle, check your credit report, confirm your realistic budget including all fees, and attend at least two viewings of any property you are serious about
2. After your offer is accepted: instruct your conveyancer the same day, commission your survey, and submit your full mortgage application without delay
3. Before exchange: confirm your mortgage offer is finalised, check all searches have returned satisfactorily, arrange buildings insurance to start from exchange, and have your deposit cleared and ready in your solicitor’s account
4. On completion day: confirm with your solicitor that funds have transferred, collect your keys once you get the call, and notify your utility providers and local council of your move so council tax and billing transfer smoothly

When does it make sense to use an independent buyer agent?

International buyers and second-home purchasers face a version of this process with extra layers: currency timing, cross-border tax questions, and a property market they cannot easily view in person on short notice. This is where an independent buyer agent earns its keep, particularly outside England and Wales, in markets like the French Riviera where the legal process and local market knowledge differ substantially.

Living On The Cote d’Azur works this way on the French Riviera, searching the entire market through a network of local agents, developers, and off-market contacts rather than representing a single agency’s own listings. That means access to a far wider pool of properties than any one agency window shows, along with negotiation handled on the buyer’s behalf and introductions to trusted notaires, tax advisers, and mortgage brokers when needed.

A buyer working alone typically sees only the properties one agency chooses to show them. A buyer agent searching across a network sees the whole market, including the off-market properties that never reach a portal at all.

This model suits international second-home buyers, relocating families, and investors most clearly, anyone who needs one trusted point of contact managing a purchase they cannot fully oversee in person. You can read more about how the buyer search and vetting process works or see the full property acquisition approach for a sense of how the process runs end to end.

Buy with confidence: get expert guidance at every stage

Whether you are navigating your first purchase in England and Wales or considering a second home on the French Riviera, the principle is the same: the buyer who moves fastest and asks the sharpest questions at each stage is the one who avoids the delays that trip everyone else up.

If your search is taking you toward the South of France, Living On The Cote d’Azur represents buyers, not sellers, searching across more than 100,000 properties through its network of local agents and developers, from apartments in Nice and Cannes to villas in Saint-Tropez, Mougins, and Cap d’Antibes. That includes off-market opportunities you would never find browsing alone, plus coordination through to the notaire and introductions to trusted tax and financing specialists where needed.

Start with the home hunting service page to see how a buyer-first search actually works, or explore the full property acquisition guide if you want a detailed walkthrough of how Living On The Cote d’Azur manages a purchase from first search to keys in hand.

Editorial take: what most timelines get wrong

Most guides to buying a home treat the seven-month average as a target. It is not. It is a midpoint that hides a wide spread, and the single biggest lever on where you land within that spread is how fast you move in the two weeks after your offer is accepted, not how well you negotiate the price.

Conventional advice spends most of its energy on searching and offering, and treats conveyancing as background administration that “just happens.” That gets the emphasis backwards. Since nothing is binding until exchange, the real work, and the real risk, sits in the gap between acceptance and exchange. That is where transactions collapse, and it is entirely within your control to shrink that window by instructing your conveyancer the same day your offer lands, rather than waiting for a mortgage offer that has nothing to do with your legal instruction.

If you take one thing from this article, prioritise document readiness over house hunting polish. A buyer with scanned ID, proof of funds, and a Mortgage in Principle ready to hand over on day one will consistently beat a slower, better-prepared negotiator to the finish line.

Sources

• Rightmove guides — Buying your first home: step-by-step process and timeline
• Gov
• How to Buy guide — MHCLG PDF

FAQ

Is a £30,000 salary enough to buy a house?

It depends on your deposit, existing debt, and local property prices, since lenders typically offer around four to four-and-a-half times your income, though affordability checks vary by lender and personal circumstances.

Who moves first on completion day?

Your solicitor transfers your remaining funds to the seller’s solicitor first; once the seller’s solicitor confirms receipt, the estate agent releases the keys to you.

How long does the average house buying process take?

Around seven months from starting your search to completion, according to Rightmove’s data, though chain length and mortgage complexity can extend this considerably.

What are the final stages of buying a house?

The final stages are exchange of contracts, which makes the sale legally binding, followed by completion, when funds transfer and you collect the keys, typically one to two weeks after exchange.

Recommended

• Link to: What is a good return on investment in real estate?
• Link to: What does off market mean in property: a guide for buyers and sellers
• Link to: Why choose new construction on the Côte d’Azur
• Link to: Luxury single family homes in the UK: 2026 buyer’s guide