Buying a Property

Once you have instructed us we must wait to receive the pre-contract package from the seller's conveyancer. Following receipt of this, we can apply for the local authority search, and any other necessary searches such as a mining report and drainage/ water search. You will be required to pay the search fees to us before the searches can be started.

 

As well as submitting the searches, we will check through the papers supplied by the seller’s conveyancer to raise any additional enquiries and await the replies. We will also await the search results and your mortgage offer, and follow any special instructions from the lender. Because a seller is under no duty to disclose physical defects in a property, you may wish to commission your own comprehensive survey report on the property. Any valuation carried out on behalf of the mortgage lender will be very basic and should not be relied upon by you.

 

Once we are sure that everything is satisfactory, a property report will be produced and sent to you. You will then be asked to sign the documentation including the contract and provide a deposit. This is usually 10% of the purchase price but if you are selling and buying it is normally possible to use the deposit paid by your buyer on your purchase. A suitable completion date will be discussed with you. We can then exchange contracts with the seller's conveyancer. The transaction is then legally binding. If you change your mind about the purchase once contracts have been exchanged, you can expect to lose your deposit at least, and you will be liable to compensate the seller for any financial losses incurred.

 

You will be responsible to insure the building as from exchange of contracts and we will ask you to supply a copy of your insurance policy schedule to us.

 

After exchange our final pre-completion searches are then undertaken. We will ask you to pay any remaining balance of monies required to complete, before the completion day. Your mortgage advance will be requested to arrive into our client account the day before completion, to avoid any delays.

 

You should arrange removals and notify the relevant service providers once contracts are exchanged. It is not advisable to do this beforehand, unless there is a very short time between exchange of contracts and completion.

 

On the completion day we will hand over the balance of the funds by bank transfer, and receive in return the title deeds from the seller's conveyancer. If applicable, stamp duty land tax is paid, and we will arrange to register the transfer at the Land Registry. Once the title is registered we will supply a copy to you and send the original document to your lender. We may also send to you some other documents for safe-keeping, such as guarantees or planning consents if your lender does not want to store them.