Exchange and Completion: Timings, Process & What to Expect

When you buy a property in England and Wales there are two dates that matter more than any other.

Exchange is when you're committed. Completion is when you get the keys.

Article updated: September 2026

This guide covers what actually happens at each stage, how the timings work, what the contract says about deposits, delays and insurance, and the practical side I've picked up from 20 years of buying investment property.

What is Exchange of Contracts?

Exchange is the point of no return. Up to that moment the sale is "subject to contract" and either side can walk away. The government's How to buy a home guide puts it plainly: exchange is when the buyer and seller exchange their signed agreements, which legally bind them to the transaction. Withdraw after that and you may lose your deposit and have to compensate the seller for other losses.

The mechanics are simple. You sign one copy of the contract, the seller signs an identical one. The two conveyancers then agree, usually over the phone, that the contracts are exchanged. The Law Society's Standard Conditions of Sale (fifth edition, 2018 revision) are a printed set of standard terms that a residential sale contract can adopt, and the contract can change or leave out any of them (condition 1.1.4). The copy linked here sits inside a CILEX training pack, at Document 6. Every condition number that follows refers to those terms, and each one applies only where your contract keeps it. Where it does, condition 2.1.2 allows exactly that phone call: if the parties' conveyancers agree to treat exchange as having taken place before the copies are physically swapped, the contract is made when they agree. No meeting, no ceremony. A phone call, a note of the time, and you're bound.

At exchange you pay the deposit. Under condition 2.2.1 of the same Standard Conditions the buyer pays a deposit of 10 per cent of the purchase price no later than the date of the contract. That figure is a contract term, not a law, and condition 1.1.4 lets the parties vary it, so a smaller deposit is possible if the seller agrees to it in writing. Either way it isn't an extra cost. It comes off the balance you pay at completion.

The bit that catches people out is insurance. Condition 5.1.1 of the Standard Conditions says the property is at the buyer's risk from the date of the contract. Under condition 5.1.2 the seller has no obligation to insure it. The exceptions are a contract that says a seller's policy continues, and a property let on terms that oblige the seller to insure. In plain terms, on a freehold purchase on those terms the building is your problem from the moment of exchange, not the moment you get the keys. That is why some buy to let costs like buildings insurance start before you own anything, and why the government guide lists arranging buildings insurance as something to do before you exchange. A leasehold flat is often different, because the block policy carries on, and your conveyancer will tell you which position you're in.

What Time Does Exchange Happen?

There is no set time. Exchange happens whenever both conveyancers are ready to make the call, during their working day, and nobody can promise you a slot like 11am.

On a simple purchase with no chain that can be first thing in the morning. In a chain, every link has to confirm up the line before the calls start, which pushes exchange later into the day. You'll get a call or an email from your conveyancer once it's done, with the completion date confirmed.

What is Completion?

Completion is the day the money moves and the property changes hands. Your conveyancer sends the balance of the purchase price to the seller's conveyancer. Where the contract keeps condition 6.7 of the Standard Conditions, that payment is a direct transfer of cleared funds from an account held in the name of a conveyancer at a clearing bank. Once the seller's side confirms the money has landed, the keys are released, normally through the estate agent, and you can move in or get the trades started.

The register at HM Land Registry is updated afterwards, not on the day. HM Land Registry's own explanation is that registration happens after completion and collection of the keys, and after any Stamp Duty or Land Transaction Tax has been paid. The sale is legal and the new owner can move in while that application is processed.

What about the seller moving out? The contract uses 2pm as the marker rather than a fixed moving-out time. Condition 6.1.3 of the Standard Conditions covers a sale with vacant possession where the buyer is ready, able and willing to complete. If the money isn't paid until after 2pm because the seller hasn't vacated, the seller is treated as the one in default. That is a rule about who carries the cost of a late day, not a promise that you'll have the keys by two.

The purchase tax is tied to completion too, in most cases. In England, Stamp Duty Land Tax runs from the "effective date" of the transaction. HMRC's return guidance says that is usually the day the transfer completes, but it can be earlier if the contract is "substantially performed" first, for example if you take possession or pay most of the price before completion. From that date there are 14 days to send the return and pay any tax due. On a purchase at £40,000 or more a return is normally needed even if no tax is owed, and HMRC's guidance lists the cases where no return is required. HMRC's manual at SDLTM00060 puts the responsibility for the return and the payment on the purchaser, although in practice your conveyancer files it and pays it out of the money you send them for completion. In Wales the tax is Land Transaction Tax, and the Welsh Revenue Authority's overview gives 30 days from the day after completion, or other effective date, to file and pay.

What Time Does Completion Happen?

You can rely on the day far more than the hour.

In a chain, completions happen in sequence. The bottom of the chain completes first, then the next, then the next. If you're third in line, two other transactions have to finish before the money reaches yours. The government's buying guide says keys are often handed over around lunchtime. Conveyancers push to get the money across before 2pm. That is because condition 6.1.2 of the Standard Conditions treats money received after 2pm as arriving the next working day when compensation is worked out. The condition puts that delay down to the buyer. Condition 6.1.3 makes an exception on a sale with vacant possession where the money was late because the seller hadn't moved out. If the buyer was ready, able and willing to complete, the seller is treated as the one in default instead.

Sellers can still be in the property at the time you expected the keys, because their own onward purchase has slipped. It happens. The conveyancers ring round and keep things moving, but if you've got removal vans or tradespeople booked for the day, a plan that allows for an afternoon handover has room in it that a 10am access plan does not.

Key Differences: Exchange vs Completion

Exchange is when the sale becomes binding, and completion is when the balance is paid and the keys are released.

The key thing: you don't own the property at exchange. You're committed to buying it. Ownership changes at completion, and the register catches up after that.

What Happens on Exchange Day

Your conveyancer contacts you to confirm you're ready. They need your go-ahead before they exchange, and this is your last chance to walk away without being bound by the contract. What you've already spent stays spent: the government's buying guide notes that searches are paid up front and some legal fees can still be charged if a sale doesn't go through. The contract deposit, and the contract's remedies against a buyer who doesn't complete, only come into play once contracts are exchanged.

The government's How to buy a home guide spells out what "ready" means. You're satisfied with the searches, any survey and the contract. Your mortgage is confirmed. You can pay the deposit and the associated costs in cleared funds. And buildings insurance is organised. Your conveyancer will also want the deposit sitting in their client account before they pick up the phone.

Once you give the green light, the conveyancers exchange by phone. They check the two contracts match, confirm the completion date and record the time of exchange. On a fixed-date purchase that date is agreed before exchange and written into the contract. If a contract names no date and keeps condition 6.1.1 of the Standard Conditions, completion falls twenty working days after the date of the contract.

From this point, failing to complete has consequences the contract spells out. Under conditions 6.8 and 7.4 of the Standard Conditions, a seller who is ready, able and willing to complete can serve a notice to complete. If the buyer still fails to complete within the notice period, the seller may rescind the contract, forfeit and keep the deposit, resell the property and claim damages. Nothing in the process physically stops a buyer exchanging before the checks are done, which is why the checks matter. Mortgage offer issued. Any survey read. Enquiries answered. Exchanging in the hope a problem sorts itself out afterwards leaves you bound to a contract with the problem still in it.

What Happens Between Exchange and Completion

What happens between exchange and completion is mostly your conveyancer's work, but it helps to know what they're doing.

They prepare a completion statement that breaks everything down: purchase price, deposit already paid, balance due, the purchase tax, their fees and any disbursements. If you're buying with a mortgage they request the funds from your lender so the money arrives in their client account in time. On the seller's side, their conveyancer gets a redemption statement from the seller's lender so the old mortgage can be paid off out of the sale money on the day.

In a chain, the conveyancers line everything up so every transaction completes on the same day. One link hitting a problem affects everyone above and below it. You're only as fast as the slowest solicitor in the chain.

Can you see the property again before completion? On a normal resale, only if the seller agrees. The government's buying guide suggests asking the seller about another visit during this period. A new-build covered by the New Homes Quality Code is different. The Code covers a home reserved by a named individual, for their own use, from a developer registered with the New Homes Quality Board. The reservation also has to come on or after the date that developer went live under the Code. Whether a particular purchase is covered is something to confirm with the developer and your conveyancer. For a covered purchase, section 2.8 of the Code requires the developer to give the customer the opportunity to inspect the home before completion. The customer can do that themselves or appoint a suitably qualified inspector. Either way, the inspection is subject to the site's health and safety rules. A visit is most useful when the seller agreed to do repairs, or when you're buying with vacant possession and want to see for yourself that the place is empty before the money goes.

How long is the gap? The government guide describes completion as taking place around two to four weeks after exchange, and notes the two can happen at the same time. That is guidance on the usual shape of a purchase, not a rule. The contract sets the actual date. Whatever the gap is, it's your window for booking removals, arranging utility transfers and redirecting post.

How Long Does It All Take?

Exchange itself takes minutes. The slow part is getting to exchange, and that is the real answer to how long exchange of contracts takes.

The government's How to buy a home guide, last updated in September 2019, puts the whole run from an offer accepted subject to contract through to moving in at approximately 12 weeks, and adds that precise timing varies. That is dated guidance for the whole transaction, not a measured current average and not a figure for the pre-exchange stage on its own. What that time is made of is the part you can do something about.

Searches have to come back from the local authority. If you have a survey, which the guide says buyers should strongly consider, it has to be done and read. Your conveyancer raises enquiries on the contract pack and the seller's side has to answer them. If you're buying with a mortgage, the lender has to value the property, underwrite the loan and issue a formal offer, and the guide lists a confirmed mortgage among the things to have in place before you exchange. Then, if there's a chain, every other buyer and seller in it has to reach the same point before anyone exchanges.

Cash purchase with no chain: the mortgage steps and the chain steps drop out, and the searches and enquiries are what you're waiting on. Mortgage purchase inside a chain: you're waiting on all of it, and on the slowest person in the chain.

Exchange and completion can happen on the same day, or with a gap. Where there is a gap, the government's buying guide describes it as often around two to four weeks, and if the contract names no date and keeps condition 6.1.1, the Standard Conditions fill it with twenty working days. The guide describes the completion date as confirmed at exchange, and that written date is the one you can plan around.

3 Months or 6 Months Between Exchange and Completion

Some transactions have a much longer gap, and the reasons are usually structural rather than anyone dragging their feet.

New-builds are the obvious one. You exchange while the home is still being built, and completion follows once it's finished. The New Homes Quality Code covers a home bought as a named individual from a developer registered with the New Homes Quality Board. The reservation has to come on or after that developer's activation date, the day it went live under the Code. A home bought by a company, trust or charity is outside it. The Code defines a new home as one the customer buys for their own use, and it doesn't say plainly whether a named individual buying to let is covered. So whether a particular purchase falls under it is a question for the developer and your conveyancer before you reserve. For a covered purchase the Code requires the contract of sale to define the completion notice period. That is the time between the developer serving notice that the home is ready and the completion date. The contract also has to explain what happens if the home is not ready by the date the developer said it would be. The Code says that period is usually expected to be at least 14 calendar days, unless the developer and the customer agree otherwise. Outside the Code, the notice period and any long-stop date are whatever your contract says, so they are worth reading before you sign.

Other long gaps come from sellers who need time to find their next home. Some come from a property being sold with planning granted while an application is still going through. Others come from a tenancy that has to run its course before vacant possession can be given.

A long gap puts pressure on your finance. Mortgage offers expire. How long yours lasts is printed on the offer letter and lenders differ, so a gap that outlasts the offer means going back to the lender to extend or reapply, with whatever fees and delay that involves. That conversation is easier to have before exchange than after it.

Can You Exchange and Complete on the Same Day?

Yes. It's called simultaneous exchange and completion, and the government's buying guide notes that the two can occur at the same time.

With no chain there is nobody else to line up, so a chain-free buyer and seller can agree to do both on one day.

The upside is that there is no gap. You are not bound to a date weeks away, and there is less time between committing and getting the keys for a mortgage offer to expire or for circumstances to change. It is not certainty. Right up to the moment of exchange neither side is bound, so either can still walk away on the morning.

The downside is that there is no buffer either. Everything has to land on one day: the funds, the documents, both conveyancers. If the money isn't there in time and contracts haven't been exchanged, nobody is bound, and the whole thing may move to another day or not happen at all. If contracts were exchanged that morning and the money then fails to arrive, you are bound to a contract and completion is late, and the contract's compensation and notice rules apply. Either way, if you had a van booked you have a van and no keys.

In a chain, same-day means every link in the row exchanging and completing on the same day. A gap between the stages, the two to four weeks the government guide describes, gives everyone room to move money and people in the right order.

Can You Exchange Without a Completion Date?

People ask whether you can exchange contracts without a completion date, and the strict answer is that a contract on the unamended Standard Conditions always has a date or a way of fixing one.

If nothing is written in and condition 6.1.1 of the Standard Conditions applies unchanged, completion is twenty working days after the date of the contract. What people usually mean by "no date" is completion on notice: the contract says completion takes place a set number of days after one side serves notice that they are ready. That is the shape of a new-build contract under the New Homes Quality Code for a covered purchase, where the contract of sale has to define that notice period. The developer's notice just says the home is ready. It is a different thing from the notice to complete one side serves when the other fails to complete on the day. Completion on notice also turns up when a seller is still looking for their next home and won't commit to a day.

Completion on notice means you are bound but you don't know your moving date. Your mortgage offer has an expiry date that doesn't move with the notice. If you're selling as well, lining up the two sides gets harder. Those are the reasons a fixed date is easier to live with. Where the date is open, there are three questions to put to your conveyancer. How much notice do you get? Is there a long-stop date after which you can walk away? And what happens to your deposit if you do?

Does Completion Have to Be on a Friday?

No. Completion can be on any working day. Friday appeals because you can move over the weekend without taking time off work, and the government's buying guide notes that Fridays are often very busy for removals.

The catch is what happens if Friday goes wrong late in the day. Under condition 6.1.2 of the Standard Conditions, completion money received after 2pm is treated as arriving on the next working day when compensation is worked out. The exception is where condition 6.1.3 makes the seller the one in default. A working day under condition 1.1.1 is Monday to Friday, excluding Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays. On an ordinary Friday the next working day is Monday, and later still if Monday is a bank holiday. A problem that surfaces late on a Friday afternoon can end up waiting until the following week.

In practice completion runs on bank working days, because the purchase money has to move between conveyancers' client accounts and the contract counts time in working days.

Completing earlier in the week, away from a bank holiday, leaves a working day after it. If something slips on a Tuesday, there's a Wednesday to fix it in.

What Property Investors Need to Know

The legal steps are the same whether you're buying a home to live in or an investment property in UK towns and cities. What changes is what you're checking, who's living there and how much of the timing you control. Doing due diligence on property as an investor covers the local area, the price and the likely rent as well as the building itself.

Realistic Timescales

The parts of the timetable an investor controls are the boring ones. That means returning the conveyancer's forms and ID checks promptly, and having proof of funds ready before it's asked for. It also means instructing the conveyancer the day the offer is accepted rather than a fortnight later. The parts you don't control are the searches, the seller's replies and everyone else in the chain, and conveyancers handle many files at once, so yours waits its turn. The government guide's yardstick for the whole run is approximately 12 weeks from sale agreed to moving in, which is 2019 guidance, and the guide itself says precise timing varies.

If speed matters, the question to ask before instructing is whether the conveyancer answers the phone and has capacity for another file. DIY conveyancing runs into a practical wall here: where the contract keeps condition 6.7 of the Standard Conditions, the completion money has to come from an account held in the name of a conveyancer at a clearing bank.

Chain Risk is Real

A chain is a row of purchases that all depend on each other. The person selling to you is buying somewhere else, and their seller is buying somewhere else again. Nobody exchanges until everyone can, so one survey result, one mortgage decision or one change of heart anywhere in the row stops the whole thing. That is where a sale that has been "agreed" for months quietly falls apart.

An investor who isn't selling anything to fund the purchase has no chain on their side. That is true whether they're buying below market value properties or adding a tenanted flat to a portfolio. Being chain-free is one of the reasons sellers and agents take that buyer's offer seriously. It doesn't remove the chain above you if the seller is buying on, but it takes one set of dependencies out of the picture.

Tenanted vs Vacant

Property investments may be sold with tenants in place or with vacant possession, and the two need different checks before exchange. Buying tenanted means you take over as landlord at completion with the tenancy that is already running, and what exactly transfers with it, including the tenant's deposit, is a question for your conveyancer and letting agent before you exchange. Some of the buy to let properties for sale that investors look at are sold this way, and who gets which part of the rent around completion day is settled on the completion statement.

Buying with vacant possession? Make sure it's in the contract and see the property before completion. Condition 6.1.3 of the Standard Conditions treats the seller as the one in default if you're ready, able and willing to complete and the money is paid after 2pm because they haven't moved out. But a contract remedy is a poor substitute for an empty property on the day you've booked the trades.

Exchange Deposits

The starting point is 10 per cent of the purchase price, paid no later than the date of the contract, under condition 2.2.1 of the Standard Conditions. Condition 1.1.4 allows the contract to vary that, so a reduced deposit is sometimes agreed on investment purchases. Two things to know before asking for one. Sellers aren't obliged to accept less, and a lower deposit can make your offer look weaker than a competing buyer's. And a reduced deposit doesn't cap your exposure. If the seller serves a notice to complete, a buyer who paid less than 10 per cent has to pay the balance up to 10 per cent straight away. That is condition 6.8.3, where the contract keeps it.

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