Thanks, I am taking the comments on board and appreciate all advice on offer. Nothing is signed off at all yet, so who knows what'll happen. I'll be careful, no question about that.
Sorry, only seeing this now as I don't visit very often.
It's still progressing. The contracts exchange is taking ages, much longer than any of us expected, due to delays with bank finding/releasing the deeds and other little issues. We're hoping to get it done this week at long last. We had the engineer survey done last week and that went fine.
This thread would make good reading for those {rushing} to buy their dream home.
Joe5791 ,listened, worked and finally purchased with both eyes open.
Wish him well.
Not quite 15 months, no! We had our first viewing in late January of this year, so it was about 4 months overall. It would have been maybe a month sooner if the banks weren't so inefficient at releasing deeds and so on.