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Discover what the exchange of contracts means for your house move.
The exchange of contracts will be handled by your solicitor. Before the exchange can happen, you’ll need to make sure of the following:
Once that’s all done, you can exchange contracts. If you’re buying a house, this is the exciting bit. You’ll be given a moving in date shortly after this point.
You will need to arrange buildings insurance for your new home before the exchange of contracts. This covers against the cost of damage to your new home from things like fires and floods.
It usually takes around eight to 12 weeks to reach the point where you’re ready to exchange contracts. The actual process is quite speedy, requiring a phone call between the buyer’s and seller’s solicitors.
Once your contracts have been exchanged, you can start to look forward to moving day. There are a few things you need to sort ahead of this:
Your solicitor will discuss dates for completion with you once your contracts have been exchanged.
Usually, there’s a period of one to three weeks between exchange and completion, but this may be longer depending on the size of your chain.
Equally, it’s common for the exchange and completion to happen on the same day, so you can get moved in quicker.
The content on this page is for reference and does not constitute financial advice. For impartial financial advice, we recommend government bodies like MoneyHelper