Buying your first home: what happens, and when

The process looks opaque from the outside because three parties run parts of it at once, and none of them reports to you. Set out in order it is straightforward, and most of the stages that slip do so for reasons that were avoidable.

Before you look: get pre-approved

A pre-approval takes a day or two and tells you the price band you can actually transact in. Looking at houses before this is how people fall in love with something they cannot buy. It also strengthens an offer, because a seller with two similar offers takes the one already backed by a lender.

Week one: the offer to purchase

The offer to purchase is a binding contract once both parties sign, not an expression of interest. Read the suspensive conditions carefully, particularly the bond clause, which gives you a fixed number of days to secure finance. If that period lapses without a bond, the sale can fall through and any deposit paid sits with the attorneys until it is resolved.

Weeks one to two: the application

A complete file goes to the lenders within a day. Incomplete files are the single biggest source of delay, and the missing item is nearly always the same one: three months of bank statements in the bank's own format, or a payslip that does not match the statements.

• Identity document and proof of residence.
• Three months of payslips, or six for commission earners.
• Three to six months of bank statements, stamped or in original electronic format.
• The signed offer to purchase.
• For the self-employed, two years of signed financials and current management accounts.

Weeks two to three: decisions and the valuation

Most banks respond within two to five working days, some the same day. Each approval is conditional on the bank's own valuation of the property, which it arranges itself and which usually takes another week. A valuation that comes in under the purchase price reduces what the bank will lend, and the shortfall becomes cash you have to find.

This is the point at which the offers are compared and the rate is negotiated. Once you accept one and sign the quotation, the others fall away.

Weeks three to ten: the attorneys

Three sets of attorneys may now be working at once: the transferring attorney, the bond attorney, and the cancellation attorney handling the seller's existing bond. They have to lodge at the Deeds Office together, so the whole matter moves at the pace of the slowest one.

• Rates clearance from the municipality. Frequently the longest single wait, and entirely outside anyone's control.
• Levy clearance from the body corporate, if it is a sectional title.
• Compliance certificates from the seller.
• Your costs, paid to the attorneys. Nothing lodges until these are in.
• Your homeowner's insurance, in place from registration.

Weeks ten to twelve: lodgement and registration

Once everything is lodged the Deeds Office takes roughly seven to ten working days to examine and register. On registration the bank pays the seller, the bond is registered in your name, and the keys are yours. Your first instalment is due at the end of the following month.

Where the weeks are usually lost

• Documents supplied in pieces over two weeks instead of all at once.
• A bond clause too short to absorb a slow valuation.
• Rates clearance at a municipality with a backlog.
• New credit taken out between approval and registration, which can trigger a re-assessment and lose the approval outright.