This has probably been discussed here before but I cant seem to find the topic. I am living oversea’s and my intentions are to return home towards the middle of next year. I intend to stay for a couple of years before heading oversea’s again and have my eye on a few places in RaRaRa. I will be coming home in a few weeks to view what’s on offer and am looking at Rathmines, Rathgar and Ranelagh as my preferred destination because I have rented in the area in the past, would like to live there again and believe it to be one of the better places to have a rental property when I move oversea’s again. My questions are as follow:
1: How long would it take to go from sale agreed on a place to actually having the keys in my hands?
2: Will I still need to be in the country to get the keys or can this be left to my solicitor to sort out?
I am close to being a cash buyer (for the type of house I’m looking at) and have loan approval for any additional cash I might require to close the purchase with my current oversea’s bank. The house I am purchasing will not be my final destination home but I am happy to buy now and either follow the market up or down depending on the direction it is headed. Basically, if this house goes down in value then my final destination house will go down in value and if my final destination house goes up in value then the house I buy now will hopefully track it and offset the price increase of my final destination house. I am open to criticism/ suggestions on my frame of thoughts at present.
There’s no rule on how quick you’d get the keys after sale agreed. If both parties are motivated, with solicitors who are equally motivated and no problems discovered it could be done in 5 weeks. If not it can go on for any number of months.
There was a lot of sloppy legal work done in the past which, in the current climate for being very careful, is now being picked up by purchaser’s solicitors.
You’re in Dublin, so the chances of running into problems would be a lot less. Outside Dublin, a rural EA told me that only one in six sale agreeds make it to completion, never mind how long it takes.
I would say anywhere from 4 weeks to 6 months+. I do agree that solicitors seem to be the ones holding things up for the majority of the process. If you can get a good one that you can sit on then it will speed up the process considerably.
On the second part of the question. Could your purchase be completed without your physical presence? I think the answer is yes (I’m not a solicitor though). In that you can assign someone temporary power of attorney to sign / complete on your behalf.
It will unfortunately be out of your control, becasue it also depends on the other side of the transaction. Average may be around 6 weeks or less, but certainly some can stretch.
Usual hold ups are with the bank needing more and more info to approve (which wouldnt be an issue for you), or the sale needed to be signed off by a bank with sellers mortgage (estate agent will tell you if sale “involves” bank). Biggets delays seem to be with legal issues around title which can take months to resolve. The title thing is something you will only discover when your solictor engages after you go sale agreed, have heard of a lot of issues around that lately but then again the types of houses being sold have had their deeds in a dusty vault for 60 years, so depends on house.
I honestly do not know where people are getting their time frames from.
IMO experience final closing takes place 6 weeks after you sign contracts. It normally takes 3 to 4 months to go from the sale agreed stage to actually signing contracts. You need to be there (or power of attorney) for signing but not for the final closing.
Keys are given to your solicitor once the sale is closed.
My five weeks from sale agreed to keys in hand is from my own recent experience. A previous house purchase took 8 weeks. Where are you getting your ‘normally takes 3-4 months’ from? Is there a survey of solicitors out there?
And it took you on average ~6 months to close every one of them?
Chances are you weren’t even waiting on the bank release and mortgage drawdown aspect.
Seriously that can’t be right, I went sale agreed last year in late May, I got the keys in my hand in late July. <10 weeks for sure and I thought the process took longer than needed because of various actors taking holidays throughout.