How long does it take to complete after an offer is accepted? The honest answer for the UK in 2026 is eight to sixteen weeks. The average hides a lot, but that is the range most agreed sales sit in, and the range your buyer and seller will tolerate before patience starts to crack.
The problem with averages is they tell you very little about your file. A simple cash buyer, no chain, leasehold-free, sailing through searches in a fast local authority can complete in six. A chain of three with one leasehold flat, one buyer changing lenders mid-process, and a council that takes eight weeks to return searches will be lucky to see exchange before week eighteen. Both are normal. Neither is the average.
This guide unpacks what actually eats the time, where the wait usually hides, and what you (the agent) can do to keep the file moving when nobody else seems in a hurry.
What the eight-to-sixteen-week window is made of
Most agreed sales follow the same rough sequence. The reason the range is so wide is that each step can take days or weeks depending on the file.
- Instruction of solicitors (week 1). Both sides need to formally instruct conveyancers. Most do it within a few days of offer accepted. A small minority sit on it for a week or two, especially first-time buyers shopping around for quotes.
- Initial paperwork (weeks 1–3). Buyer ID checks, source-of-funds, mortgage application formally submitted if not already, seller's TA6 and TA10 forms returned to their solicitor. This stage runs in parallel with searches.
- Local authority searches (weeks 2–8). Hugely variable. Some councils return inside a fortnight. Others take two months. You cannot change which council your buyer is searching against, but you can know how slow they are before you start.
- Enquiries (weeks 4–10). Buyer's solicitor raises questions on the seller's pack. The seller's side answers. The buyer's side raises follow-ups. This back-and-forth is where weeks disappear quietly, because each round can sit in a solicitor's inbox for ten days at a time.
- Mortgage offer (weeks 4–8). Valuation booked, surveyor visits, lender issues the formal offer. Usually arrives mid-process. Sometimes throws up a downvaluation that has to be renegotiated.
- Exchange (week 8–16). All enquiries answered, all parties' funds and ID confirmed, contracts signed and exchanged. Legally binding from this point.
- Completion (1–14 days after exchange). Often same day or one to two weeks later. Negotiated at exchange.
That sequence is roughly the same for every file. What differs is how long each step takes, and how many of them can run in parallel rather than one after another.
Where the wait actually hides
Most agents, asked where the time goes, will say "waiting on solicitors". That is true but unhelpful. It is more useful to know which kind of waiting is which.
Council searches
The single biggest variable. A fast council returns a local authority search in two weeks. A slow one takes eight. The difference is six weeks of dead time on the file, and it has nothing to do with anything you or the conveyancers can speed up.
What you can do: know your local councils' turnaround times. If the buyer's solicitor is ordering searches on a slow council, push for them to be ordered the day they instruct, not two weeks in. A week saved at the front is a week saved at the back.
Enquiries
The single biggest source of avoidable delay. A typical sale has two or three rounds of enquiries. Each round, if either solicitor is slow, can take a fortnight. Three rounds at a fortnight each is six weeks of file life spent waiting on emails.
What you can do: chase. Politely, weekly, by name, with the question already drafted. "Is the leasehold pack in yet?" gets a faster reply than "any update?"
The leasehold pack
If the property is leasehold, the seller's solicitor has to order the management pack from the freeholder or managing agent. Many take four to six weeks to send it. Some take longer. The buyer's solicitor cannot raise enquiries until they have it.
What you can do: encourage the seller to instruct early and pay for the pack the day they instruct, not when their solicitor remembers to ask. Two weeks saved at the start saves two weeks at the end.
The chain
Every additional link in the chain stretches the timeline. A chain of three typically adds two to four weeks against a chain-free sale, because everything has to land at the same speed. Your file might be ready at week six. If the buyer's onward purchase is at week eleven, you are at week eleven.
What you can do: know where every link is, not just yours. Weekly check-ins with the other agents in the chain are cheap and surface problems before they become exchange-day surprises.
What "fast" actually looks like
The fastest agreed sales we see in 2026 complete inside eight weeks. They tend to share four things:
- Chain-free or short chain (two parties max).
- Freehold, or leasehold with a fast managing agent.
- Cash buyer or a buyer who applied for their mortgage before viewing.
- Both solicitors known to be responsive (the agent has worked with them before).
You cannot manufacture those conditions on every file. But you can spot, in the first week, which combination you are working with. A short-chain freehold cash sale with two responsive solicitors should be a file you push hard from day one. A long-chain leasehold with a first-time buyer waiting on a mortgage decision should be a file you set expectations on early, so nobody is surprised when week fourteen arrives.
What the agent can actually do about the wait
Most of the delays above are not the agent's to fix. You do not order searches. You do not draft enquiries. You do not issue mortgage offers.
What you can do is hold the timeline. Know where every file is up to. Know which one has gone quiet, which one is overdue a chase, which one has a mortgage offer expiring on Friday that nobody has flagged. Make the call before the buyer rings you to ask why nothing has happened in three weeks.
For most independent agencies, that work happens in the gaps between viewings and valuations. It is the work that quietly slips when the pipeline grows past twenty live files, because nobody can hold twenty parallel timelines in their head reliably.
That is the problem a progression system solves. It watches every file, remembers what your team cannot, and shows you each morning which sales need a call today. The fee structure stays the same, your team keeps the client relationship, and you stop being the agent who finds out about an expired mortgage offer from the buyer.
See how that works on a real file.
The short version
If a buyer or seller asks you on a Friday in week three how long the whole thing will take, the honest answer is eight to sixteen weeks, leaning towards the longer end if anything in the file is leasehold, chain-heavy, or sitting in a slow council.
The better answer, after the first call with their solicitor, is more specific than that. "Council searches in your area are running at six weeks at the moment. The leasehold pack should be back by mid-July. We are looking at a realistic exchange of late August, completion mid-September." Specific numbers, with the reasons behind them, calm buyers down. Vague ones make them anxious.
Eight to sixteen weeks is the range. Knowing which end of it your file is on, and saying so out loud, is the difference between a buyer who waits and a buyer who walks.