House Survey and closing/moving in

Myself and my partner are in the latter stages of home purchase. Its a second hand home about 10 years old. We are hearing mixed things about when we should expect to move in and would like your opinions/expertise please!

* Deposit is paid, contracts issued 2 weeks ago.
* The vendors dont live there so house is ready par se.
* We should have loan offer letter early this week from bank as well as relevent insurance documentation

So when the loan offer letter is issued and we go in to solicitor to sign, how soon can we expect to move in after signing? Does the solicitor have to do his investigations, registry office digging etc before keys are given to us? Are we talking days or months? The reason im asking is because we dont know how long we need to tell landlord we will be in our existing place for as he is eager to get us out so his new tenants can move in.

Also we are not sure whether we should get survey done on the house as its 10 years old or so. Is it madness not to get one done?

Thanks!

I would certainly recommend getting a survey done- check www.scs.ie for surveyors. Typical fee is c. 300 euro approx- and often you can get vendor to carry out some jobs or deduct from selling price!

Would definitely recommend a survey. I'm in a similar position to yourself but the house I'm purchasing was built in the 1950s. As the engineer who did the survey said and what i would agree with myself is that he would be more worried about the structure of houses built in the last 10 years than houses which are 20+ years old.

As regards your other question, i would be interested to hear over peoples answers as well. I'm sale agreed on a house exactly 2 months ago today and I'm still awaiting contracts. The house is empty as well so would like to hear from people who were in a similar situation as to how long after contracts were exchanged before they got the keys.