Four clocks, not one
- Preparation. Pre-approval, paperwork, deciding what you want. Short, and entirely within your control.
- The search. The elastic one. Some buyers write on the third home they see; others look through two seasons. This is where all the variance lives.
- Offer to firm. The condition period, and its length is written into the offer you signed. You negotiated it. How long should it be →
- Firm to possession. Also a date in the contract. A buyer who needs time and a seller who needs to move can agree to almost anything.
People ask how long buying takes as though the market decides. It mostly does not. Two of the four clocks are dates you chose, and a third is how disciplined your search is.
What actually stretches it
In practice the delays we see are the same handful every year:
- Starting to view before financing is properly sorted, then losing homes while it catches up.
- Criteria that quietly do not exist at that price in that community — a month of viewings is a slow way to learn it.
- Losing out in competition. Nothing wrong with your process; it simply resets the search.
- Condo documents. Ordering and reviewing them properly takes real days, and rushing that is a bad trade.
- Lender conditions surfacing late, which is why we ask for a documented pre-approval rather than a rate hold.
How to make it shorter without making it worse
Be ready before you look. View in batches so you are comparing rather than remembering. Tell your REALTOR® honestly what you disliked about each home — that is the feedback that sharpens the search. And decide in advance what you would say yes to, because the buyers who take longest are usually the ones who have never defined the finish line.