What Actually Happens Between the First Phone Call and the Keys

Most people have no idea what happens between the first phone call and the keys. That is not a failing on their part. Nobody is taught it, it only happens a handful of times in a life, and the industry has never been in a hurry to explain itself.

So here is the whole thing, start to finish, with the waiting bits left in and nothing dressed up.

Thirty minutes, phone or video. We want to know what you are actually trying to do, and what your situation genuinely looks like rather than the tidy version. What you earn and how you earn it. What you owe, including the things that feel too small to mention. What you have saved and where it came from. Whether anyone is helping you.

Nothing is assessed on this call and nothing is submitted. It exists so that the advice you get afterwards is built on your real position rather than a guess. If it turns out that now is not the right time to borrow, this is the call where we say so.

Within a couple of hours you get a document request, a client portal invite and an open banking invite. Open banking is the one worth using. It connects your accounts directly and sends your statements through verified, in the format lenders want, without you downloading anything. It takes a few minutes and removes the most tedious part of the whole process.

Everything else goes in the portal rather than across six emails. Identification, payslips, tax returns if you work for yourself, loan and card statements, and evidence of your deposit.

Why any of it is required is worth saying plainly. Under responsible lending obligations nobody is allowed to take your word for your income and your expenses. It has to be verified. That is the law the whole industry works under, not a broker being difficult.

Living expenses usually get their own conversation. It is the part of an application a form handles badly, and it goes better as a discussion than as a list of boxes.

This is the part most people think a calculator already gave them. It did not.

An online calculator applies one set of assumptions. A lender applies its own credit policy, and those policies differ enough to change the answer materially. Overtime, bonuses, commission, a second job, allowances, a study debt, a credit card limit you never use: every one of those is read differently depending on whose rules are being applied. The same person can come back with meaningfully different numbers from two lenders in the same week.

So we work out what you can actually borrow, against how lenders really assess your income, and we tell you where the figure came from rather than just handing you a number.

You also find out at this point whether the thing standing between you and the property is your income or your deposit, because those two problems have completely different solutions.

Once the research is complete, we explain the recommended lender, loan structure and product, including why that option fits your position better than the alternatives. You see the comparison and the next steps before anything is submitted.

Pre approval, sometimes called conditional approval, is a lender agreeing in principle before you have found a property. It usually takes three to ten business days depending on the lender and how clean your documents are, and most run for around ninety days before they need refreshing.

It is genuinely useful. It tells an agent you are real, it tells you where you are shopping, and it stops you falling for something that was never going to work.

It is not a locked number. It is calculated using an assessment rate, which is a higher rate the lender tests you against rather than the one you would pay. The regulator expects lenders to add at least three percentage points on top. So if rates move, or lender policy tightens, or you take on a car loan while you are house hunting, the figure can change without anyone telling you. If yours is a couple of months old and you are still looking, get it rechecked before you sign something rather than after.

This is your part, and it is the part with no fixed timeline. Some people buy in three weeks. Some take a year. Neither is wrong.

What matters from our side is that you tell us before you sign anything, not after. Auction and private sale work differently, and the finance clause in a contract is not something to agree to without knowing whether it can actually be met. A contract signed unconditionally when your finance is not unconditional is the most expensive mistake available in this whole process.

Once you have an accepted offer, we prepare and lodge the formal application and manage the lender relationship from there.

Formal approval commonly takes five to fifteen business days, depending on the lender, the valuation and how complicated your situation is.

The lender orders a valuation of the property. Sometimes that is a desktop figure, sometimes a full inspection. Occasionally it comes back under what you agreed to pay, which is awkward but not fatal, and there are usually options.

Then comes conditional approval, which is a yes with a list attached. That list is called outstanding items and it is where the process gets noisy. A recent one landed at six in the evening with four items on it and a countdown attached, only three of which were ours to fix. The fourth belonged to the solicitor.

Building insurance is almost always on that list, and it catches people out. The certificate usually has to show the policy number, the security address and the applicant name on the one document, or the lender will not accept it. Depending on how the loan is structured you can be asked for a combined certificate covering more than one property.

When the list is cleared you get unconditional approval, which is the real yes. We have a longer article on exactly what happens between unconditional approval and settlement if you want that part in detail.

The lender sends out the contract. We review the loan documents and explain the terms before you sign and return them. This stage moves at the speed you move at, so if you are going away, say so, because an unsigned document sitting in an inbox is one of the most common causes of a delayed settlement.

We coordinate with the lender, your conveyancer or solicitor and the agent so everyone has what they need for the agreed settlement date. Any final documents, insurance evidence or funding conditions need to be cleared before the handover can happen.

Your conveyancer or solicitor, the seller's representative and the lender all meet electronically to exchange money and title. Most of this happens without you. You get a phone call or a message when it is done, and then you pick up the keys.

If you are refinancing rather than buying, settlement is quieter. The new loan pays out the old one and starts. A straightforward refinance usually takes two to six weeks, and the outgoing lender's discharge process is almost always the slowest part of it.

This is the step most of the industry skips, which is why so many people end up on a rate they would never have agreed to if anyone had asked them.

A loan that suited you this year may not suit you in three. Rates move, your income changes, your life changes. We check in rather than disappearing once the commission is paid.

From the first call to the keys, a straightforward purchase commonly runs somewhere between six weeks and three months once you have found a property. The two things most likely to stretch it are documents arriving slowly and a contract signed before the finance was ready.

Neither of those is complicated to avoid. They just need somebody to tell you about them before they happen, which is the entire point of writing this down.

If you are at the start of this and the whole thing feels opaque, that is the normal reaction to a process nobody explains.