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How it works

Four steps with us, seven stages with a lender.

The part you experience is short. The part underneath it — application, valuation, underwriting, offer, then the legal work that follows — has its own sequence, its own queues, and its own reasons for stopping.

Knowing what each stage is actually waiting for is the difference between a delay you can do something about and one you can only worry about.

Talk to an adviser
A London stock brick terrace with white sash windows, a painted front door and climbing greenery, seen from the pavement in late afternoon light.

With us

Four steps, about three weeks to an offer.

Timings depend on the lender and on your circumstances. Your adviser tells you where you are at each stage rather than leaving you to guess.

  1. Tell us about the purchase

    Ten minutes online or on a call: income, deposit, and the property if you have found one. Enough to establish which lenders are realistic before anything is submitted anywhere.

  2. Get your borrowing range

    A realistic minimum and maximum, the products that sit inside it, and what each of them costs across its initial period — not just its rate.

  3. Choose and apply

    Your adviser recommends a product, explains why that one, and submits the application with your documents already attached rather than promised.

  4. Offer and completion

    We track the valuation and the underwriting, answer the lender's questions, and stay on the case until keys change hands.

Underneath

What the lender is doing, stage by stage.

This is the sequence every UK residential mortgage passes through. The names vary slightly between lenders; the order does not.

  1. Agreement in principle

    An indication of what a lender would lend, based on figures you state and usually a soft credit search that leaves no mark visible to other lenders. It is not binding on anyone, and estate agents will ask to see one before they take an offer seriously.

  2. Full application

    The real thing: complete details, supporting documents, and a hard credit search that is recorded on your file. The application is priced against a specific product, and that product is reserved when it is submitted.

  3. Valuation

    The lender instructs its own valuation of the property to confirm it is adequate security. This is for the lender, not for you — it is not a survey and says nothing about condition. A valuation below the agreed price changes the loan to value and can change the product.

  4. Underwriting

    A human reviews the case against the lender's criteria: income evidence, credit history, the source of the deposit, anything unusual in the bank statements. Questions at this stage are routine. How fast they are answered is the single biggest variable in the whole timeline.

  5. Formal mortgage offer

    Issued to you and to your conveyancer, setting out the loan, the product, the conditions and an expiry date. Conditions are common and range from trivial to substantial; they have to be satisfied before funds are released.

  6. Exchange of contracts

    Legal work on the property runs in parallel throughout. Exchange makes the contract binding on both sides and fixes the completion date. From this point the risk in the property is generally yours, which is why buildings insurance starts here rather than at completion.

  7. Completion

    The lender releases the funds to your conveyancer, the money moves, the transfer is registered and the keys are released. On a move, a sale and a purchase usually complete on the same day and the chain settles in sequence.

Friction

What actually causes delay.

Almost none of it is processing time. Nearly all of it is waiting for a person — which is why most of it is preventable.

Documents arriving one at a time

A case that goes in incomplete sits in a queue, gets reviewed, gets a request raised, then rejoins the queue. Each round trip can cost days. A complete file at submission is the cheapest speed available.

Something undisclosed on the file

A missed payment, an undeclared loan, a gambling pattern in the statements. Discovered in underwriting, it can cost a decline and a hard search. Disclosed at the start, it usually just changes which lender the case goes to.

A valuation that comes in low

The loan to value rises, which may push the case into a different product band or require a larger deposit. It is challengeable with evidence of comparable sales, but the challenge takes time.

The property itself

A short lease, non-standard construction, cladding, a flat above commercial premises, or an unresolved issue with the title. All are lender-specific, and all are better identified before an offer than after.

Conveyancing started late

The legal work is the longest thread in the process and the one least affected by the mortgage. Instructing on the day the offer is accepted rather than a week later is free and routinely saves more time than anything else on this list.

The chain

A chain moves at the pace of its slowest link, and you cannot see the others. What you can control is not being the slow link, and knowing early when someone else is.

One thing to watch

The offer has an expiry date, and the chain does not care about it.

A mortgage offer is typically valid for a matter of months. For most purchases that is comfortable. For a new build under construction, or a chain that stalls, it is not — and an expired offer means going back to the lender, often for a fresh assessment, sometimes on different products at different rates.

Extensions are possible with most lenders but are not automatic, and they are far easier to obtain before the offer lapses than after. Watching that date from the week the offer is issued, rather than from the week it becomes a problem, is the whole of the advice here.

A hand holding up a single key in front of the door of a home.

Questions

Process questions.

How long does a mortgage application take?

From full application to formal offer is commonly a few weeks, though it varies widely with the lender's workload and the complexity of the case. Completion is a separate question governed by conveyancing and the chain, and typically runs to a few months from an accepted offer. The mortgage is rarely the reason a purchase is slow.

What is the difference between an agreement in principle and a mortgage offer?

An agreement in principle is an indication based on figures you have stated, usually with a soft credit search, and binds nobody. A mortgage offer is the lender's formal commitment after full assessment, valuation and underwriting, issued to you and your conveyancer with conditions and an expiry date attached. Only the second one is worth anything at exchange.

Does a mortgage application affect my credit score?

An agreement in principle usually involves a soft search, visible to you but not to other lenders. A full application involves a hard search, which is recorded on your file. Several hard searches in a short period can count against you, which is a practical reason to decide where to apply before applying rather than applying in several places to see what happens.

Can a mortgage offer be withdrawn?

Yes, up until completion, if something material changes — your employment, your income, your credit position, or something discovered about the property. Lenders often re-check shortly before release of funds. It is why taking on new credit between offer and completion is a genuinely bad idea, however tempting a sofa on finance may be.

What is a mortgage valuation, and do I need a survey too?

The valuation is for the lender, confirming the property is adequate security. It tells you almost nothing about the building's condition. A survey is separate, commissioned by you, and available at different levels of detail. On an older or unusual property a fuller survey routinely pays for itself; on a modern one it is more of a judgement call.

When do I actually need the deposit?

A portion is normally required at exchange of contracts, and the balance on completion. Both are paid to your conveyancer, who will want cleared funds well in advance and will also want to see where the money came from. Do not assume same-day transfers will work on the day — they frequently do not.

Keep reading

Related pages.

First-time buyer mortgagesWhat counts as a first-time buyer in the UK, what you need before you apply, and every cost that lands on completion day beyond the deposit.
Mortgage repayment calculatorWork out a monthly repayment, total interest and loan to value, and see which of the four inputs actually moves the figure.
What you getClarity, speed, cost and people — the four things that change how the process feels, described in full rather than as headlines.
Help centrePlain answers to the questions that come up most often across an application, grouped by the stage you are at.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. Figures shown on this site are illustrative estimates and do not constitute advice or an offer of credit.

Next step

Start at step one.

Ten minutes about the purchase gives you a borrowing range. Everything on this page follows from that.

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