Guide to the Conveyancing Process

This is usually 10% of the purchase price. It can be less if the sum received on any related sale does not equal 10% of the sale price, or if the buyers are obtaining over 90% by way of a mortgage.

When you are selling and buying a property, you are in a “chain”. This means your progress in the transaction is linked to the progress made by your buyer and seller and so timescales must work accordingly.

Exchange of contracts refers to signed contracts from sellers and buyers being exchanged through the post. Once contracts have been exchanged, the sale is legally binding.

This is the date when money and ownership change hands. The buyer becomes the legal owner of a property, and the seller must move out. If the sale has gone through an estate agent, we suggest liaising with them to establish a completion date as quickly as possible. The completion date will be fixed upon the exchange of contracts and cannot be changed after this point without incurring significant penalties. Both parties must therefore be absolutely sure before agreeing on a date.

The first thing to do once you’ve instructed us as your solicitor is complete a form confirming your identification, contact information, and financial details. This is part of our regulatory and legal obligations. Once the seller has instructed their solicitor, they will send us to contract the documents, including:

• Property information form – this provides information on legal boundaries, any work completed on the property, and planning regulations amongst other matters.
• Fittings and contents form – this specifies what the seller will leave at the property and what they will take with them.
• A copy of the title to the property – this determines whether the seller is legally entitled to sell the property.
• Contract of sale – this specifies the address and price of the property, plus the names and addresses of the buyer and seller.

After we receive the contract documentation, we carry out a number of searches, including:

• Personal Regulated Local Search and/or Official Local Authority Search
• Drainage Search
• Environmental Search

Further searches, including bankruptcy and Land Registry searches, will be carried out pre-completion.

If you need a mortgage to buy your property, you will probably have already made an application. We need to receive mortgage instructions in writing before we can exchange contracts.  It is common for your mortgage lender to instruct us to act on their behalf in a conveyancing transaction. We are on the majority of lender conveyancing panels, which prevents delays. Occasionally, however, a lender may wish to instruct their own solicitors.

Unless you are buying a new property, we recommend that you have a full structural survey. This will give you a more in-depth understanding of the property’s overall condition and alert you to any potential issues. We may be able to recommend a Chartered Surveyor if you are unsure who to instruct. Surveyors often have advanced knowledge of planning and development if they are local to the area. While your mortgage lender will instruct a valuation, this is purely for their benefit and does not provide any detail in terms of the property’s structural soundness. You should therefore think carefully before relying solely on a basic valuation or homebuyer’s report from the lender.

Our conveyancers will not see or inspect the boundaries, so it will be for you and your surveyor to carefully check that the boundaries of the property are as you expect.  Prior to the exchange of contracts, we will provide you with a Land Registry plan to check against the layout on the ground. As the buyer, you should be aware that the principle of “let the buyer beware” applies. You should therefore conduct surveys and test services and/or appliances to avoid any issues once you have exchanged contracts.

Once all the relevant searches are complete, surveys have been performed, and finances are in place, you will receive a contract to sign in readiness for exchange. We will also request your deposit to release to the seller’s solicitors on exchange of contracts. At this point, you should also have agreed on a completion date with the seller.

We also advise that you inspect the property prior to the exchange of contracts to ensure the property is in the condition you expect.  The seller will not be liable for matters which would be apparent from survey or inspection.

The exchange will take place between solicitors via telephone, where we will transfer the deposit to the seller’s solicitor. In most cases, the risk for a property also passes to the buyer at this point, so you will need to have the right insurance in place.

We will prepare a financial statement setting out the costs incurred within the transaction. These funds must be cleared one working day before completion. If you have a mortgage, we will request drawdown. On the agreed completion date, we transfer the balance of the sale to the seller’s solicitor. This usually happens between 1pm and 2pm. Following completion, we will handle the payment of your Stamp Duty Land Tax and the registration formalities at the Land Registry.

As with the buyers’ process, we will ask you to complete a form confirming your identification, contact information, and financial details. You will also need to complete standard forms about the property itself and put together a legal pack to send to your buyer’s solicitor. This will include:

• A fittings and contents form
• A property information form
• A copy of the title to the property
• A Contract of sale for approval

Usually, the buyer’s solicitors will raise some enquiries. We will answer what we can, but we will usually defer to you. We then ask you to sign the contract and transfer the documents and request instructions on the completion date. The property must be ready and vacant on completion unless you are selling the property tenanted. We will assist with the timeframes needed to complete the legal side of things.

The exchange of contracts will take place between solicitors over the telephone. This is when we request the deposit from the seller’s solicitor and the sale becomes legally binding.

If you have a mortgage, we request a settlement figure from your lender. This is the amount you need to repay your mortgage lender once your property is sold. You will be asked to sign a transfer document if you have not signed one already. It is vital that that document is with us before the completion date. At this point, you should make sure that the estate agent has the keys to hand over to the buyer on completion, unless you have arranged a personal handover.

On your agreed completion date, the buyer’s solicitor will send us the balance of the payment for your property. The contractual time for completion is usually between 1pm and 2pm, so the property should be clear and ready by lunchtime. We use the completion funds to pay off your mortgage, your estate agency fees, our fees, and any costs incurred during the sale. Any money left over will be forwarded to you unless it is needed for a related purchase.