Twelve weeks, on average
From the first hour to the keys.
What happens each week, what you sign, and what usually goes wrong. The weeks below are the ones we quote to vendors, not the fastest sale we have ever had.
Week by week
Eight stages, twelve weeks.
Median of eleven sales, twelve months to August 2026
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Week 0
The valuation
Put the kettle on. We bring the tape.
An hour in the house with a tape, then one number in writing two days later with the nine sales behind it.
Week 1
The instruction
You sign the instruction letter.
Two pages: the fee, the twelve weeks, and the date it ends. One partner is named on it and does not change.
Week 2
Photography and the measured survey
Choose the day, and let us have the house until four.
One photographer for a day, shooting each room in the light it actually gets, and a licensed surveyor measuring floor by floor.
Week 3
The particular is written
Read it, and correct anything that is wrong.
One hundred and twenty words, signed by the partner who walked the house, and printed rather than posted online first.
Weeks 4–5
The private list
Keep two afternoons free.
The particular is posted to the registered buyers it suits. Four of last year’s eleven sales were agreed in this fortnight, before a public entry existed.
Week 6
The catalogue, and one portal entry
Nothing at all.
The lot takes its number in the season’s catalogue. A single portal entry follows, with the same words and the same photographs.
Weeks 7–9
Viewings, then offers in writing
Decide. We advise; the number is yours.
Accompanied, never in a group, and never two buyers on one afternoon. Every offer arrives with proof of funds and the buyer’s own chain set out.
Weeks 10–12
Survey, contract, keys
You sign the contract, and hand over two sets of keys.
The survey lands in week ten and the questions it raises are answered in writing. Contracts are exchanged, and the keys are handed over at the office.
The drawing room of Lot 04, on the morning of its first viewing
Candour
What usually goes wrong.
11 agreed · 2 fell through · 2 recovered
Week 10
The survey finds the roof
It is the roof about half the time, and the drainage most of the rest. A buyer who has just spent money on a survey wants the figure taken off the price.
What we do
Get two written quotations within four days, then split the difference in the open rather than argue about an estimate nobody has seen.
Week 11
The buyer’s own sale falls through
This is why every offer we bring you arrives with the chain written down. When it breaks, it is almost always two houses further back.
What we do
Go back to the two buyers who were second and third, by telephone and on the same day. Twice last year the second buyer bought.
Week 12
Your own date moves
The house you are buying is delayed, or a family date changes, and completion has to move with it.
What we do
Ask for the new date in writing and take it to the buyer ourselves, before their solicitor hears it from anyone else.
None of the three costs you a fee, and none of them restarts the twelve weeks.
Two things we ask
Both of them are about time.
And one thing we never ask for
Twelve weeks, sole
Not because it ties you in, but because the private list only works once. A particular that has already been posted by another office is read as a house that did not sell, and we cannot send it twice.
Two afternoons a week
Accompanied viewings are the whole method, and they have to happen when buyers can come. Two fixed afternoons is usually enough for the six to nine viewings a sale takes.
The thing we never ask for is a renewal. The instruction ends on the Friday of week twelve whether it has sold or not, and it does not roll over because nobody wrote a letter.