From mortgage offer to completion: what happens next

Once your formal mortgage offer is issued, the mortgage side of your purchase is largely done and the legal side takes over. A copy of the offer goes to your conveyancer, who checks its conditions, finishes enquiries, and works towards exchange of contracts. From offer to completion commonly takes four to eight weeks in England and Wales, though a chain can stretch it. A mortgage offer usually lasts around three to six months from issue.

You receive the offer document, a mortgage illustration setting out the rate, term, monthly payment and any early repayment charges, and a list of conditions. Your conveyancer receives their own copy along with instructions from the lender.

Read the conditions carefully. Common ones include works to be completed before drawdown, a retention where part of the loan is held back until repairs are done, evidence of buildings insurance, proof that a specific debt has been repaid, or confirmation of a gifted deposit. Some conditions are for you and some are for your solicitor, and it is worth explicitly asking which are which.

Check the offer for errors too. Names, the property address, the loan amount, the term and the product should all match what you expect. Mistakes are unusual but far easier to fix now than a week before completion.

Around three to six months from issue is typical, and the exact period is set by the lender and printed on the offer. Some lenders date validity from the original application rather than from issue, which shortens the window in practice, so check which applies to you.

Diarise the expiry date immediately. It is the deadline your entire legal process is now working towards, and your solicitor needs to know it as well as you do.

Between offer and exchange, your conveyancer is finishing the legal work. The remaining steps usually are:

• Resolve any outstanding enquiries on the contract, searches and survey
• Satisfy the lender's conditions and confirm to the lender that they are met
• Send you a report on title, explaining what you are buying and any issues found
• Send you the contract and transfer deed to sign and return
• Send a completion statement showing the exact sum you must transfer
• Agree a completion date with the other side, and with everyone else in the chain

You need buildings insurance in place from exchange, not from completion, because in England and Wales the risk passes to you at exchange. For a leasehold flat, the building is normally insured by the freeholder, so check whether you need contents cover only.

Exchange is the moment the deal becomes binding in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Solicitors read the two identical contracts to each other over the phone, confirm they match, and exchange them. The completion date is fixed at that point.

You will have transferred your exchange deposit to your solicitor beforehand, traditionally ten percent of the purchase price, though five percent is often agreed. Send it by bank transfer at least a few working days ahead, allow for daily transfer limits, and verify the account details by phoning your solicitor on a number you already have. Conveyancing payment fraud is a real and well-documented risk, and no legitimate firm will email you changed bank details out of the blue.

If you withdraw after exchange, you typically forfeit that deposit and can be liable for the seller's losses.

In Scotland, this stage does not exist in the same form. Both parties became bound when missives were concluded, earlier in the process, and the period between conclusion of missives and the date of entry serves a similar practical function.

The gap is commonly one to two weeks, though same-day exchange and completion happens and so do gaps of a month or more where someone needs time to move.

During the gap your solicitor requests the mortgage funds from the lender. Lenders usually need several working days notice, often five, and some charge if funds are drawn and then not used. Your solicitor will also carry out final searches, including a bankruptcy search against you and a priority search at the Land Registry to protect the registration.

Book removals as soon as you have exchanged, not before. Take final meter readings on the day and confirm your final balance is with your solicitor in cleared funds well ahead of completion morning.

Completion is a money transfer, and the choreography is dull but tight. Funds move from your lender to your solicitor, then from your solicitor to the seller's solicitor. When the seller's solicitor confirms receipt, they authorise the estate agent to release the keys.

Realistically, expect keys somewhere between late morning and mid afternoon. Transfers in a chain must happen in sequence, so the more properties involved, the later the day tends to run. Completion can fail to happen on the day if a transfer misses a cut off, which is why nobody in the trade recommends booking a removal van for eight in the morning at the bottom of a five-property chain.

Afterwards, your solicitor deals with the land tax return and payment, and applies to register you at the Land Registry. Which tax applies depends on where you bought: Stamp Duty Land Tax in England and Northern Ireland, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland, Land Transaction Tax in Wales. Filing deadlines differ between the regimes, so confirm the position with your solicitor or the relevant tax authority rather than assuming.

This happens more often than you would think, usually when a chain stalls or a leasehold pack drags. Options depend on the lender:

• Ask for an extension. Many lenders will extend, typically by one to three months, on request from your broker or solicitor with an explanation of the delay. Some ask for updated payslips or a fresh credit check.
• Re-apply. If an extension is refused, a new application to the same lender may be needed, and the product available then may not be the one you originally secured.
• Move lender. Sometimes faster than fighting an extension, but it means a new application, a new valuation and several more weeks.

Ask for an extension well before the expiry date, not in the final week. Lenders are far more willing to help when there is time, and your broker will know how each lender likes to be asked. Also be aware that a rate secured months ago may not be available on a re-application, so protecting the existing offer is usually worth some effort.

New build purchases run to the developer's timetable. You will typically pay a reservation fee and be given a contractual deadline to exchange, often around 28 days from reservation, which is aggressive if your solicitor is still waiting on searches.

Where the property is unfinished, you exchange on a plot with a long stop date, the latest date by which the developer must complete. Completion is then triggered by a notice to complete once the property is finished and building control sign-off is issued, often giving you as little as ten to fourteen days notice.

The risk is obvious: a mortgage offer with a six month life against a build that slips by four months. Some lenders offer longer offer validity for new builds precisely because of this. Ask about it before you choose a product rather than after.

If your offer expiry is starting to look tight, the MortgageMatch directory can put you in touch with an FCA-authorised broker who deals with extension requests regularly.