Purchase Procedure
Once you have found the property you wish to purchase and your offer has been accepted, you will need to appoint a Solicitor or Licensed Conveyancer to deal with the legal transfer of the property into your name and to undertake enquiries and searches designed to ensure that the property is free from any onerous obligations or rights or title flaws that might make it either unsuitable for your needs or difficult to sell.
How Long Will it Take?
It is difficult to estimate how long a conveyance will take as there are a number of practical factors outside the control of your solicitor.
- Do you need a Mortgage Offer
- Is there a Chain
- How quickly will the Seller or their solicitors deal with any enquiries we may need to raise
- Is there a problem with the Survey
- Is there a Defect in Title
If there are no unduly problematic matters arising during the pre contract stage most transactions take between 8-16 weeks from offer to Completion.
We will send you our Quote Pack usually this is sent by email as is all of correspondence (unless you elect written communication through the post). Please give our contact details to the estate agent who will then send out a memorandum of sale to confirm the sale, and enable the solicitors to communicate with each other. If you are not buying or selling through an agent please let us have full details of the transaction and the other parties' conveyancer's details. The Seller's conveyancers will apply for copies of title deeds and submit a draft contract.
On receipt of the paperwork we, as the buyers' conveyancers
- Carry out any searches required these can be
- Local Authority Search
- Water Search
- Environmental Search
- Chancel Liability Search
- Mining and other appropriate Searches – where the property is in a mining area to ensure that past or future mining works do not or will not affect the property.
- Check the contract and the title deeds and raise any enquiries of the Seller's Conveyancers we have resulting from this.
- Send copies of the paperwork to you with an explanation of anything of concern or interest.
If you require a mortgage we must await a written offer with the terms, the Mortgage Offer.
Once we have your mortgage offer containing the mortgage documents for signature we will be in a position to report to you fully and arrange for you to sign all appropriate documents. We can either see you in person or report to you in writing. Once we have everything back signed and a deposit (if you are not also selling) we will be ready to exchange contracts.
However, this does not necessarily mean that we can exchange where you are involved in a Conveyancing Chain.
Once all parties either are ready to exchange and a Completion Date has been agreed. Subject to your final instructions we will carry out the Exchange of Contracts. It is therefore essential to ensure that you are able to move on Completion and have sufficient available funds for the date agreed.
Between exchange and completion we carry out final Land Registry search to ensure that you application for registration at the Land Registry has priority over any other application and a bankruptcy search on behalf of your lender (if any) and arrange for all funds to be in our account and cleared for completion.
You will need to finalise your removal arrangements please see our Purchase checklist.
On Completion the funds must be transferred to you seller's conveyancers by the Time to Complete. You will be able to move in or take possession of the property.
For a summary of the arrangements you will need to make when moving, please see our Purchase checklist.