Purchasing a Property

Once a sale has been agreed, you will provide your estate agents with your solicitor’s details so that they can send out the sales memorandum with the property details and the details of the buyers and sellers and their solicitors.

Your solicitor will then open your file and send you out your initial terms of engagement which you will need to return signed and dated before work can commence. An initial fee will be required at this time so that the searches against the property with the local drainage and environment searches can be commenced.

Once the seller’s solicitors have received their client’s signed terms, they will send out the draft contract and supporting documents.

Upon receipt of the draft documents from the seller’s solicitors, the buyers solicitor will carry out searches and raise any further additional enquiries of the seller’s solicitors that may be necessary. The searches will usually take between 10 to 15 days to come through once applied for.

The buyer’s solicitors will then wait to receive the buyer’s Mortgage Offer and the search results and all replies to any further enquiries which may have been raised. Once the buyer’s solicitor is happy that all searches are back and there is nothing untoward and all enquiries have been satisfied, they will write a report with all of their findings and send this to the buyer together with the contract for signature.

The contracts will be returned to the solicitors who will then liaise with both buyer and seller regarding a mutually convenient completion date and contracts will then be formally exchanged.

After exchange, the buyer’s solicitor will request the mortgage advance and provide a statement to the buyer confirming how much more money will be needed (if any) before completion.

Completion is the day that the funds are transferred to the seller’s solicitors who will then confirm to the Estate Agents and the seller that formal completion of the purchase has taken place and that keys to the property can now be released to the buyer.

After completion, the post completion formalities are dealt with by the buyer’s solicitors. The Stamp Duty will be paid and thereafter, Land Registry application will be submitted to change the title register into the new owners’ names. If the property is leasehold, the management company or agent’s post completion requirements will also be dealt with.

Upon completion of registration, a copy of the updated title register will be sent to the buyers along with any other relevant documents.