What Happens After Your Offer Is Accepted?

Feeling overwhelmed the moment your offer is accepted is completely normal, even if you have bought a house before. You have just cleared one hurdle, but a longer, more technical stage of the process is about to begin, and it can feel unpredictable if nobody has explained the order of events. Most house purchases in England and Wales take somewhere between 12 and 20 weeks from an accepted offer to getting the keys, depending on whether the property is freehold or leasehold, whether you are part of a chain, and how quickly your mortgage lender and conveyancer move. Knowing the stages ahead, instructing a conveyancer, applying for your mortgage, booking a survey, exchanging contracts and completing, means you can spot what is normal progress and what genuinely needs chasing.

Before you go further, hold onto a few key facts about where you stand right now.

• Typical timeline: 12 to 16 weeks for freehold, 16 to 20 weeks for leasehold.
• Key milestones ahead: instructing a conveyancer, mortgage valuation, survey, exchange of contracts, completion day.
• Legally binding from: exchange of contracts, not from offer acceptance.
• Can it still fall through: yes, either side can withdraw before exchange without financial penalty in most cases.

Sold Subject to Contract

When an estate agent marks a property "sold subject to contract" (SSTC), it means a price has been agreed but no contracts have been signed. This is a statement of intent, not a legal commitment. Your conveyancer will spend the coming weeks turning that agreement into a binding contract by running searches, checking the title, and raising enquiries about the property. Until you reach exchange, you are not committed to buying and the seller is not committed to selling, whatever verbal or email assurances have been made.

This matters because it explains two things buyers often find frustrating. First, why your solicitor won't let you book removal vans or hand in notice on rented accommodation until much closer to completion. Second, why gazumping (a seller accepting a higher offer from someone else) and gazundering (a buyer reducing their offer late in the process) remain legally possible right up until exchange, even after months of work on both sides.

The 48 hours after your offer is accepted set the tone for everything that follows. Buyers who move quickly here tend to have shorter, smoother transactions, because conveyancers, lenders and surveyors all need instructions before they can start their part of the process. Use this window to lock in the essentials rather than waiting for the estate agent to chase you.

Ask the Agent to Take the Property Off the Market

Confirm with the estate agent, in writing, that the property has been marked sold subject to contract and taken off portals like Rightmove and Zoopla. This reduces, but does not eliminate, the risk of gazumping, since other buyers are less likely to approach the seller through the agent once a property is showing as under offer.

Instruct Your Conveyancer

Choose and formally instruct a solicitor or licensed conveyancer as soon as the offer is accepted, not after you have found a survey firm or finalised your mortgage deal. Most conveyancers cannot start work, including identity checks and the initial paperwork, until you have paid an on-account fee and returned signed terms of engagement. If you're not sure how the process works from here, our conveyancing process explained guide walks through each stage your solicitor will handle.

Confirm Your Mortgage Application

If you have an agreement in principle, contact your broker or lender within a day or two to convert it into a full mortgage application. Lenders need the property address and purchase price before they can instruct a valuation, and valuation slots can take one to three weeks to book, so delay here directly delays your whole timeline.

Notify Your Own Buyer (If You're in a Chain)

If you are selling a property to fund this purchase, tell your own buyer's solicitor that your onward purchase has been agreed. Chains move at the pace of their slowest link, so keeping everyone informed early reduces the chance of a mismatch later, where one end of the chain is ready to exchange weeks before the other.

Once instructed, your conveyancer becomes the legal engine of your purchase, and understanding what they actually do helps you know when to expect updates and when radio silence is genuinely worth a phone call. Conveyancing fees for a typical freehold purchase run from £850 to £1,500 plus VAT, and if you want the full breakdown of how much conveyancing costs, that guide covers legal fees and disbursements separately.

What Your Conveyancer Does

Your conveyancer requests the title register from the Land Registry, drafts or checks the contract pack, and orders local authority, water and drainage, and environmental searches. Our guide to conveyancing searches explained covers these in more detail, but in short they reveal planning history, flood risk, and any legal restrictions on the property. They also raise "enquiries", written questions to the seller's solicitor about anything unclear in the paperwork, from boundary disputes to whether a conservatory had building regulations sign-off.

Freehold vs Leasehold: Why Leasehold Takes Longer

Freehold purchases only involve you, the seller, and the two sets of solicitors. Leasehold purchases add a third party, the freeholder or their managing agent, who must supply a management pack confirming service charge accounts, ground rent, and any building works planned. This pack alone can take two to six weeks to arrive, which is why leasehold conveyancing typically adds four to six weeks onto the overall timeline compared with a similar freehold purchase.

How to Stay on Top of Progress

Ask your conveyancer for their preferred update method, weekly email or an online case tracker, at the outset, and stick to it rather than calling ad hoc. A short, specific question such as "have searches come back yet" gets answered faster than a general "how's it going" call, and most delays at this stage come from slow third parties, local authorities, freeholders, the other side's solicitor, rather than your own conveyancer sitting on the file.

Getting a mortgage offer confirmed is just as important as the legal work, and it runs on a parallel track to your conveyancing. Delays here are one of the most common reasons purchases slip past their expected completion date, so understanding what your lender needs at each stage helps you keep pace.

Full Mortgage Application vs Agreement in Principle

An agreement in principle is an estimate based on a soft credit check and self-reported income, useful for house-hunting but not a guarantee. Once your offer is accepted, you convert this into a full application, which requires payslips, bank statements, proof of deposit, and often a credit check that leaves a mark on your file. Lenders typically take one to three weeks to issue a formal mortgage offer once they have all your documents, so submit everything in one go rather than trickling paperwork through.

What Happens at the Lender Valuation

Your lender instructs its own valuation, usually a brief visual inspection rather than a detailed survey, to confirm the property is worth at least what you have agreed to pay. This typically costs £150 to £300 and is often bundled into your mortgage fees. It protects the lender's interest in the property, not yours, which is why it is not a substitute for your own independent survey.

What to Do If You Are Down-Valued

A down-valuation happens when the lender's valuer decides the property is worth less than your offer, which can happen in 5 to 10% of purchases in a slowing market. Your options are to renegotiate the price with the seller using the valuation as evidence, increase your deposit to cover the shortfall, challenge the valuation with your lender using comparable sales evidence, or walk away. Acting within a few days keeps your onward chain intact, since delay here often causes chain-wide frustration.

Your mortgage lender's valuation only protects the bank, so booking your own survey is the one step in this process that genuinely protects you. Skipping it to save a few hundred pounds is one of the most common regrets buyers report after moving in and discovering an issue that a survey would have flagged.

Survey Types Compared

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) sets out three main survey levels. A Level 1 Condition Report is the most basic, flagging urgent problems without detail or advice, and suits new-build or very recently renovated homes. A Level 2 HomeBuyer Report suits conventional properties in reasonable condition built from standard materials, and includes a valuation opinion alongside condition ratings. A Level 3 Building Survey is the most thorough, recommended for older, larger, or unusual properties, listed buildings, or homes you plan to renovate, and includes detailed structural commentary.

Typical Survey Costs

Costs scale with property size, value, and survey level, not just region. Expect a Level 1 report to cost roughly £300 to £500, a Level 2 HomeBuyer Report £400 to £1,000, and a Level 3 Building Survey £600 to £1,500 or more on larger or period properties. Paying more for a Level 3 survey on an older property is almost always cheaper than the repair bill it might uncover.

What to Do If the Survey Reveals Problems

If your survey flags issues, from damp to subsidence to an unsafe electrical installation, you have three realistic options: ask the seller to fix the problem before completion, request a price reduction to cover the cost of repairs yourself, or get specialist quotes to understand the true scale before deciding whether to proceed at all. Minor issues worth a few hundred pounds of work are rarely worth reopening negotiations over, but anything running into the thousands is worth raising with your conveyancer immediately.

Exchange of contracts is the single most important legal moment in buying a house, because it is the point at which the transaction becomes binding on both sides. Everything before this, searches, surveys, mortgage offers, is preparation; exchange is commitment.

At exchange, both solicitors read out the contract terms to each other over the phone and confirm the wording is identical, then formally exchange signed copies. You pay your deposit at this point, typically 5% to 10% of the purchase price, which is held by the seller's solicitor, or for new builds sometimes by the developer, until completion. Once exchanged, neither party can withdraw without serious financial consequences: the buyer risks losing their deposit, and the seller can be sued for damages or forced to complete anyway.

The completion date is fixed at exchange, and the gap between exchange and completion varies enormously, from same-day, rare and usually chain-free purchases, to several weeks, with two weeks being a common middle ground that gives everyone time to arrange removals and final mortgage drawdown. For a fuller breakdown of what happens on both days, see our guide to exchange of contracts and completion.

Completion day is what everything since your offer was accepted has been building towards, and it typically runs to a fairly predictable rhythm once you know what to expect.

Your conveyancer sends the remaining balance of your purchase price, mortgage funds plus your own contribution, to the seller's solicitor by telegraphic transfer, usually first thing in the morning. Bank transfers between solicitors' client accounts can take a few hours to clear, even though they are same-day, so a completion booked for 10am might not actually see funds land until early afternoon on a busy day. Once the seller's solicitor confirms receipt of funds, they instruct the estate agent to release the keys, and you are legally the new owner from that moment.

Common completion day frustrations include delays caused by a long chain, since your sale must complete before your purchase can, so any delay upstream cascades down, and the natural anxiety of waiting by the phone for a call that could come any time between 11am and 4pm. Have removals booked for early afternoon rather than first thing, keep your phone charged, and confirm with your conveyancer the morning of completion that funds have been requested on schedule.

Most purchases complete without drama, but knowing the common failure points means you can recognise a problem early and respond calmly rather than panicking.

Gazumping

Gazumping happens when a seller accepts a higher offer from another buyer after already agreeing a price with you, which remains legal in England and Wales right up until exchange. It is more common in fast-moving markets and with sellers who have not yet found their own onward property. If it happens, you can match the new offer, walk away, or ask the agent to confirm in writing that the property is genuinely off the market. Our guide on what is gazumping and how to prevent it covers practical steps to reduce the risk, including lock-out agreements.

Chain Collapse

A chain collapses when one buyer or seller anywhere along the line pulls out, which can stall or end every linked transaction. Signs include a solicitor going quiet, a buyer's mortgage offer expiring, or a seller getting cold feet. If your chain collapses, your conveyancer can sometimes find a replacement buyer or seller to slot in, though this adds weeks. Our guide on pulling out of a house sale covers your own position and costs if you are the one considering withdrawing.

Mortgage Decline or Down-Valuation

A lender can decline your application even after issuing an agreement in principle, usually because of a change in circumstances, a poor valuation, or new information from a credit check. Down-valuation is more common and is covered in detail earlier in this guide; both scenarios usually mean returning to your broker quickly to explore alternative lenders before your survey and search results go stale.

Survey Issues Requiring Renegotiation

When a survey uncovers a defect, renegotiation is normal and sellers generally expect it, especially for anything the original listing did not disclose. Keep requests proportionate to genuine cost estimates rather than opening ambitious negotiations, since sellers who feel a buyer is using minor issues to chip away at price sometimes walk away from the deal entirely.

Buyers consistently underestimate how long the post-offer stage takes, largely because the process depends on several parties, your conveyancer, the seller's conveyancer, your lender, a surveyor, and sometimes a freeholder, all moving in step rather than one firm working through a checklist.

A straightforward freehold purchase with no chain typically completes in 8 to 12 weeks from offer acceptance. Add a chain on either side and this stretches to 12 to 16 weeks. Leasehold purchases usually take 16 to 20 weeks because of the extra management pack and, occasionally, lease extension negotiations. For the full breakdown of what speeds up or slows down each stage, our dedicated guide to conveyancing timeline covers regional variation and seasonal factors in more depth.

• Fastest realistic timeline: 6 to 8 weeks for a cash buyer, chain-free, freehold purchase.
• Typical freehold purchase: 12 to 16 weeks with a mortgage and one chain link.
• Typical leasehold purchase: 16 to 20 weeks due to management pack delays.
• What speeds things up: instructing your conveyancer immediately, having your mortgage documents ready, and a responsive seller's solicitor.
• What slows things down: long chains, slow local authority searches, and missing leasehold information.