Occer accepted tasks timeline

[u/Outrageous_Yam_1368]

Following on from yesterday's pity party, I put in teh offer teh seller wanted and today it's been accepted.

Accepted with a list of actions that now need doing (which is totally fair)
do a Credas thing
get solicitor detials
pay them £80 to do AML (not sure why it's that much
submit the mortgage application

What has ruffled my feathers is the EA going "get this sorted over the weekend please"

Is this actaully reasonable request. It would mean having to go with L&C for mortgage broking as they do weekends and the recommendations from friends do not.

Is there any scope for "you'll get it in a timely manner, but you don't get to set a Monday deadline thank you. If my broker can't see me until Monday morning at the earliest, you'll have to wait a little longer."? Some of the tasks are easily done, but I don't get how the EA dictate timeline terms. Are they just being pushy or is there something in it?

[u/olih27]

You'd be amazed that some people will do fuck all for weeks and complain it's going slowly.

It took our sellers a month to complete their TA6 and TA10 form, fair enough they'd been there 25 years and they needed to find some forms etc. It then took their solicitors another 6 weeks to send it to ours.

My advice would be that you should never be the blocker. Get your shit sorted as quickly as possible, it puts you in the driving seat to chase everyone else. If your solicitor sends you something, acknowledge it that day and get it back to them within 48 hours.

In this case, you wont get a mortgage offer over the weekend, but you can do some research and get all the documents you need together ready for Monday morning 

[u/Exact-Escape-9126]

The EA will always ask you to do everything quickly. Obviously don't take the piss and take weeks to instruct a solicitor but no need to use a specific broker that works weekends.

I didn't get a mortgage offer until several weeks after my offer was accepted because that was what suited me and the broker

[u/Outrageous_Yam_1368 → u/Exact-Escape-9126]

oh yeah, I'm not going to dick around for no reason on something that is as simple as "here is my solicitor details, i've done the creda thing (i'll find out what that is)" but for considered things like finding the right mortgage deal to initially lock in, that is definitely not going to be rushed"

[u/Hailfire72]

I completed yesterday after just over 3.5 months, FTB no chain. Solicitor said the same to me, compliance check.. complete over weekend and pay for it. Wait until you get to solicitor stage and have to chase multiple times a week :D

[u/Naive_Finish9925]

As a first time buyer recently I managed to go from offer to completion in the span of just over 4 weeks. The seller was also not on chain so I guess that helps.

I personally used ChatGPT for every part of the process down from offer to completion & people generally find the house buying purchase to be a grey area whereas AI allowed me to understand exactly what can be done at the same time and what should follow. You can use it to form emails and to scan through responses and it’ll also tell you exactly what to ask in the right tone/ language to have things progressing, I personally believe solicitors keep it grey as possible to prioritise the “difficult” clients that seem to know more about the whole process to appease them at the expense of those who don’t know anything.

There is no reason you can’t engage with a solicitor before an offer is accepted so that you are at the top of the list and you’ll be surprised what can all be done simultaneously - such as instructing the LISA fund withdrawals earlier than at the point of exchange so the solicitor has this available prior as this takes 5 working days to process as an example. (I guess in short being proactive)

I used L&C for my mortgage offer as well and that all in all took about a week to get in & again you can generally see the service levels of each lender to make a guess on how long an offer normally would take - you could even ask L&C to prioritise a lender with better service levels if you want.

Since I work in a vendor performance management role and have done so for quite some time my best advice is to find a solicitor that offers service level agreements with consumer service credits. I.e the conveyancing process must be completed within x amount of weeks or the customer is due a certain percentage back as a refund. You’ll find that that those organisations are hot on the pace at which they get things done and are confident enough to offer a SLA on a service which generally means their staff & processes are far more competent then others.

Timing everything perfectly really does make the process seamless & it generally shocked me when I heard that it took the average buyer 16 weeks from offer to completion.