What actually sets the pace on a bridge

A bridging lender can issue terms in an hour and credit-approve a case in a day. That part is genuinely fast. What decides your completion date is everything running alongside it.

Those factors are consistent from case to case, which makes them easy to plan around. Here they are in the order they arrive.

One: the valuation slot

The lender instructs a valuer from their panel. That valuer has a diary, and in a busy period the first available inspection can be ten days out, with the report a week after that. Nothing else in the process can start until it lands.

You can influence this more than you would think. Ask which panel firms cover the postcode and whether any of them can attend sooner. Make sure access is arranged before the instruction goes out — a wasted trip because the tenant was not told costs a week. And if the property is unusual, expect the panel to be smaller and the wait to be longer.

Two: the title

This is the big one, and it is visible before you commit. An unregistered title requires first registration. A missing right of way over the access. A restrictive covenant that would be breached by the works you have planned. An old charge that was redeemed years ago but never removed from the register. A leasehold with an absent freeholder.

Each of these is solvable. Each takes weeks, and some need indemnity insurance that the lender must approve. What makes them expensive is discovering them in week three, after the valuation has been paid for and the completion date has been agreed with a seller who will not move.

If you are buying at auction, the legal pack contains the answer to all of this and you can read it before you bid. If you are not, ask for office copies early and have your solicitor look at them before you exchange.

Three: undertakings and the lender's solicitor

You pay for both sides of the legal work, and the lender's solicitor is not working to your timetable. They will raise requisitions, ask for undertakings from your solicitor, and refuse to release funds until every one is satisfied.

Two things speed this up. Use a solicitor who does bridging work regularly — a firm that handles two residential purchases a month will not know what a lender's requisitions look like and will take twice as long to answer them. And answer the requisitions the day they arrive rather than the week they arrive.

Four: source of funds

Anti-money-laundering checks are not a formality and they are not quick if your deposit has an unusual history. Money that arrived from an overseas account, a gift from a family member, proceeds from a cryptocurrency disposal or the sale of a business will all need documenting properly.

Have it ready before you need it. Bank statements showing the funds accumulating, a signed gift letter with the donor's identification and their own source of funds, or completion statements from a previous sale. Assembling that from scratch under time pressure is where cases fall over in the final week.

The honest timescale

On a clean, registered freehold title, with searches available, an accessible property, a solicitor who does this regularly and a straightforward deposit: two to three weeks is realistic.

With any one of the complications above: four to six. With two of them: longer, and the answer depends entirely on which two.

We tell people which category they are in on the first call, because it changes what you should agree with the seller. A completion date agreed on the assumption of two weeks, on a case that is obviously a five-week case, is not a deadline — it is a deposit at risk.