How realistic is exchange by Friday if only 1–2 final enquiries are outstanding?
We’re buying a house in England and are now right at the end of the conveyancing process.
Our survey is complete and satisfactory, searches are back, we’ve reviewed the final report, signed all the documents electronically, and our deposit/funds are ready to be sent to our solicitor on Monday.
At the moment, our solicitor is doing the final review and there are only one or two small outstanding enquiries with the seller’s solicitor. They’re not relating to any known physical defect with the property.
One is about an old alteration to a window opening — it looks like a larger window was reduced in size some years ago. Our surveyor inspected it and found no associated defects, but our solicitor is asking whether the seller has any historic paperwork/approval for the alteration. It may simply be that no records exist because it was done a long time ago.
The seller has now asked for completion no later than 16 October, and our solicitor has said they would need roughly a week between exchange and completion for the mortgage funds, so ideally we need to exchange by Friday 9 October.
For anyone who has been in a similar position:
If the final enquiry reply comes back on Monday/Tuesday and is satisfactory, is exchange by Friday reasonably realistic?
If there is simply no historic paperwork for an old window alteration, is this usually something that can be closed fairly quickly, for example by the solicitor accepting the position or using indemnity insurance if appropriate?
How quickly did your solicitor move from “final outstanding enquiries” to actually exchanging once everything was basically ready? Anything else we can do in advance to make it faster?
We know nothing is guaranteed until exchange — just trying to get a sense of whether this sounds like a realistic final-week timeline. Thanks!