Liam Gretton

Our Guide to the Home Selling Timeline

Our Guide to The Home Selling Timeline

Selling your home can be both exciting and daunting. The home-selling process involves several key steps that require careful planning and consideration.

Whether this is your first time selling a house or you’ve experienced this process a few times before, it’s important to understand the process ahead.

The time it takes to sell differs, but having a basic understanding of what the process typically entails will leave you with everything you need to know. Continue reading our guide to the home selling timeline to learn more.

 

The Timeline of Selling Your Home in the UK

From deciding to put your property on the market to finally reaching the completion date, the home-selling timeline can seem lengthy. However, there’s no better feeling than reaching the end of completion and looking back on your efforts.

There’s a lot to consider before, during, and after selling your property. For some, the process itself can seem overwhelming, but with a little guidance, we aim to make it easier to understand. Let’s go through a simple and easy-to-understand home-selling timeline. Here’s a quick visual to show you the average timeline of each phase before we go into more detail:

Phases of the TimelineHow long does it take on average?
Getting the property readyTypically between 4-8 weeks
Setting the price and listing itTypically between 2-4 weeks
Negotiations with your offerTypically between 4-6 weeks
ConveyancingTypically between 4-16 weeks
Exchanging the contractsTypically between 1-2 weeks
CompletionTypically between 2-4 weeks after the contract exchange

 

Prepare the Property

The first initial step in the process of selling your house is preparing your property. This stage is most important, as it’s a time when you can make your home presentable and ensure it’s in excellent condition, and ready to sell. Typically, this process involves:

  • Tidying
  • Cleaning
  • Dealing with repairs
  • Completing any current renovations

 

Usually, it takes most homeowners around 2–4 weeks to complete the pre-sale stage. A few weeks is more than enough to make your home presentable and see to any repairs.

However, if you have larger repairs or ongoing renovations, it can make the process last even longer. You might need to bring in renovation professionals, such as painters. When planning to sell your home, it’s important to factor in any home projects that need completing.

 

Set a Price

Choosing the right sale price is so important for a quick property sale, as the complete home-selling timeline can become lengthy if you set unrealistic prices. Overpricing will likely steer potential buyers away, leaving them looking elsewhere in the local market.

This is why it’s important to work alongside a trusted and reputable estate agent who can help determine an appropriate price for your home.

It’s at this stage where you should seek assistance from professional estate agents, whether that be an online estate agent or a traditional agent. Beforehand, you should ensure that your chosen estate agent fees are within your budget. The length of time it takes to set a listing price can vary.

 

List the Property

Along with your estate agent, you should make sure that your home is presentable and ready to be put on the market. This stage in the timeline includes having professional photos taken of your property and then later beginning the marketing stage and showings.

Once your humble abode has been captured in its best form, your listing can go live. Undoubtedly, this part of the process can be nerve-wracking, not knowing how soon someone will show interest. Once potential buyers display interest, showings can be scheduled.

 

Offer Negotiation

Once an offer is received, you can begin to negotiate if necessary. In some cases, receiving an offer can take only a few weeks, if that. However, some properties can take anywhere up to 14 weeks to receive one.

Of course, if you receive an offer quickly, this will speed up the overall sales process. However, it’s vital to remain patient while your property is on the market. It’s not uncommon for sellers to experience up to 3 weeks of offer negotiation.

This typically involves communication regarding your asking price and the closing date, to name a few. 80% of property sales at the beginning of 2024 were sold below the asking price. If you receive multiple offers, this stage in the timeline could be prolonged.

Negotiation usually ends with all parties involved stating their agreement and signing an acceptance contract. After offer acceptance, your buyer will likely book a property survey. A home survey usually takes a few hours to a day to complete.

 

Conveyancing

After you’ve accepted an offer, you’re responsible for drawing up a legal contract to transfer ownership. Both the buyer and their solicitor should begin the conveyancing work once the offer has been accepted. Numerous searches are conducted during conveyancing, from local authority searches to environmental searches. The next stage of conveyancing is exchanging contracts.

 

Exchange Contracts

If your buyer’s mortgage lender has provided a definitive mortgage offer, the process of bringing together all the relevant information required, such as information from the Land Registry and both you and your buyer’s conveyancers, as well as results from searches that have been conducted, should be complete.

This phase of the conveyancing process can sometimes take up to 16 weeks. Once everything is in place and ready to go, you can exchange contracts.

Exchanging contracts makes the property transaction legally binding and can take between 1 and 2 weeks. At this point, towards the end of the timeline, a completion date should be set in stone.

 

Completion

Upon completion day, you’ll exchange your keys with the buyer. On this day, both conveyancing solicitors will begin organising for funds to be transferred.

You’ll then need to move out of your property – this final stage in the process often takes between two and four weeks after the contract exchange, depending on how much stuff you need to move out of the home.

 

How Long is the Home Selling Timeline Overall?

Unfortunately, how long the home selling process takes is not a one-size-fits-all answer and can take anywhere from 4-6 months on average, but once again, this could be shorter or longer depending on your circumstances. The market conditions, your property condition, listing factors, disruptions during the sale, financing issues, and many more can impact the timeline of the sale.

Therefore, when it comes to how long it takes to sell your home, it’s important to be patient but also push for productive and accurate speed. However, there are just some things that are out of your control during the house sale, so making sure you have everything you can control in place beforehand is huge. Factors such as:

  • Making any repairs you have and know of are fixed
  • Working with a reputable and hard-working estate agent
  • Maintaining the home during the sale process
  • Accomodating most or all of your viewers’ requests
  • Pricing your home accordingly (work with experts on this)

 

These are all elements you can control before a home sale, so it’s important to have these ready so it doesn’t further delay anything that doesn’t need to be delayed.

 

Selling Your Home With Liam Gretton

If you own a property on the Wirral and want to sell your home, we encourage you to get in touch. Our team of expert estate agents offer a bespoke service like no other, helping clients efficiently sell their homes in the most stress-free manner.

We want to bring you that excitement of selling your home. For many, the process is often stressful, but we aim to make it as enjoyable as possible. We offer expert guidance, advice, and support from the get-go.

Our clients mean a lot to us, and we make continuous efforts to make it easier than ever to sell a house in today’s market. We capture the special details of your home, enticing prospective buyers to come forward, and feedback from some of our previous clients proves our hard work and determination.

With years of experience in the industry, you can trust us to handle your property throughout the selling process. If you’re looking to stay local after putting your property on the market, you’ll be glad to know that we have a wide range of properties for sale across the peninsula.

Whether you wish to reside in the seaside town of West Kirby or beyond, we can help you. To find out more about our services, don’t hesitate to get in touch today.

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