Conveyancing Process

 

When buying or selling a house you are advised, although it is not compulsory or a legal requirement, to use a solicitor or licensed conveyancer to carry out the necessary legal work on your behalf.

Sale Agreed

Once a sale price has been agreed, you should employ a solicitor to prepare the conveyancing and you should consider your solicitor as the hub of the whole process of buying your property. A good solicitor will not only carry out all the legal work involved in the purchase of your property, they will also keep you informed and provide you with progress reports when requested. They will work closely with Perry Bishop and Chambers to ensure the process is as smooth as physically possible.

With this in mind, the first thing your solicitor will do is get in touch with us to obtain all the seller's and seller's solicitor's details and the seller's solicitor will send the relevant contract and documentation to your solicitor. In the meantime your solicitor will get underway a Local Authority search which tells you of any Local Authority proposals which may affect your property. Your solicitor will review the search when received and advise you of anything out of the ordinary.

Your solicitor is responsible for explaining the terms and conditions of your mortgage offer at the time you are signing the contract. Once the contract is received from the seller's solicitor, it is then forwarded through to you for signature.

Exchange of Contracts

Once a contract is signed, it can then be forwarded to the seller's solicitor. Your solicitor will then prepare the transfer and any mortgage deed and again forward this to you for signature. There is no need for you to necessarily visit your solicitor although it is more useful if this process can be explained in person by your representative.

Your solicitor will then carry out any final searches that your mortgage lender may have requested and prepare the completion statement requesting any further money from you if necessary.

Contracts are then exchanged, usually by a telephone call between solicitors, and this means that both you and the seller are legally bound and are likely to not be able to back out of the purchase without financial penalty.

Completion

You and the people you are buying from will have agreed a date to complete the purchase in accordance with your solicitor and on that date the balance of the money is forwarded. Your solicitor will deduct any money you owe to them from the balance and you are then given the keys to move in.

The solicitor's work is still not finished as they will need to pay any stamp duty which is payable at varying rates on properties over £125,000 and register your purchase with the Land Registry and return the Deeds to the property to the bank or building society for safekeeping.

For further information, please contact us.