Buying a home, step by step

Establish the ceiling before looking

The first useful step happens before any viewing: working out the largest total sum available, including the deposit, the borrowing that can be serviced, and the costs of the transaction itself. Transaction costs are routinely underestimated because they are several separate small amounts rather than one visible large one.

The ceiling is a number about the household, not about any particular house. Setting it first is what allows the rest of the process to be a search rather than a negotiation with oneself.

Viewing, and what a viewing can tell you

A viewing is good at answering questions about layout, light, noise and the immediate surroundings. It is poor at answering questions about structure, damp, services and boundaries, because those are either hidden or slow to reveal themselves. Treat the visit as a test of whether the plan works for the household, and leave the building's condition to a later stage.

Visiting twice, at different times of day and week, answers more questions than any single long visit.

The offer

An offer is a proposal, and in most systems it binds nobody. It carries two kinds of information: the figure, and the position of the buyer — whether they have a property to sell, how their purchase is funded, and how quickly they can move. Sellers weigh both, and often weigh the second more heavily than buyers expect.

Once an offer is accepted the property is usually described as under offer or sold subject to contract. Neither phrase means the sale is agreed in any binding sense.

Legal work and enquiries

After acceptance the legal stage begins. It establishes who owns the property, what precisely is being sold, what rights and obligations come with it, and what the public record says about the land and the area around it. This is where searches are carried out and where questions are put to the seller's side.

This stage is where most delay lives, and most of it is waiting for third parties rather than work being done slowly.

Survey and lender valuation

Two separate inspections usually happen around this point, and they are not the same thing. A lender's valuation protects the lender's security. A survey commissioned by the buyer reports on the condition of the building for the buyer's benefit. One is not a substitute for the other.

A survey that identifies work is not a reason to stop; it is information about cost and timing that did not exist before.

Exchange: the point of no return

Exchange of contracts is the moment a purchase becomes binding. Before it, either side can generally walk away and lose only what they have already spent. After it, walking away has serious financial consequences. Everything that needs to be known should be known before this point, not after it.

Completion, and afterwards

Completion is the transfer of money and possession, usually on a date agreed at exchange. Where the purchase sits in a chain, completion has to be coordinated with every other transaction in it, which is why dates are negotiated as carefully as figures.

After completion the ownership record is updated and any tax on the transaction is dealt with. These are administrative rather than uncertain, but they are not instantaneous.