I am about to start looking and the financing side is the part making me uneasy, mostly because every timeline I am given comes from someone who wants the deal to close.
If you have been through it, I would like to know how long pre-approval took, how long from offer to keys, which stage actually caused the delays, whether you went direct to a bank or through a broker, and anything that came up that you had not budgeted for.
Rough numbers are fine.
There is no single process, and that is the first thing worth understanding. How long it takes depends mostly on two things that have nothing to do with you: whether the seller still has a mortgage, and whether their bank is also your bank.
Roughly in order of how smoothly they go:
Mine was the last one and it took over three months between signing and transfer, almost entirely because the two banks had different processes for it. Nothing was wrong with the file. It is also worth knowing whether the seller's facility is conventional or Islamic, because the settlement mechanics differ.
The thing I would tell any first time buyer to watch is the valuation, not the approval. You agree a price, the bank values it, and the bank lends against the lower of the two. If the valuation lands under what you agreed, the difference is cash you have to find, on top of the deposit. It bites hardest where there are few genuinely comparable recent sales to point at. Most contracts carry a variance clause for exactly this, so read what yours actually says before you sign it.
On cost, budget meaningfully above the price. There is the transfer fee, agency commission, the trustee office, the valuation, the bank's arrangement fee, mortgage registration, and the developer's no objection certificate. Individually small, together not.
The delays are almost never the credit decision. They are the liability letter, the no objection certificate, and however many people have to send each other documents.
Matching that with numbers from ours earlier this year.
Pre-approval was about a week. Final approval came roughly a fortnight after the valuation was done. Offer to keys was six weeks, and the seller had no mortgage, so that is close to the best case.
Documents were the usual: identification, visa, salary certificate and six months of statements. The one that surprised us was how long the developer took to issue the no objection certificate, which is entirely outside your control and outside the bank's.
If I did it again I would get pre-approved before making any offer. It changes the conversation, and it means the only open question afterwards is the valuation.
Broker or direct depends on how ordinary your income is. Salaried, one employer, salary paid into the bank you are borrowing from, go direct. Self employed, company ownership, income across currencies, or anything that needs explaining, a broker earns their fee by knowing which lenders will actually look at it.
This is exactly what I was after. The valuation point is not something anyone had mentioned to me.