Residential Property
Wherever your property is in the country, our specialist conveyancers and solicitors can deal with all legal aspects associated with your house move or transfer. The conveyancing process can be somewhat of a minefield so to assist you we have prepared a brief overview of what the legal process involves.
Sale
Once you have accepted our quotation you will receive a
letter from us providing you with our terms of engagement and an introduction to the conveyancing team. We will supply you with some protocol forms
together with a client questionnaire which we will ask you to complete and return to us.
Once you have completed and
returned these we shall request your title deeds from your mortgage lenders (if they hold the same) and also apply to the Land Registry for office copy
entries (a copy of title to the property). These are required to prove evidence of ownership to the buyer.
The draft contract can then be prepared and sent to the buyer’s solicitors, who will in turn request their local, drainage and other searches against
your property. With your help we will then answer any additional enquiries that the buyer’s solicitors raise. Once all enquiries have been dealt
with we will then ask you to sign the contract.
Once everyone is ready and the contracts have been signed we can then proceed
to exchange. At this stage the sale becomes legally binding and a completion date (i.e. the date that you wish to move out of your house) will be
inserted in the contract. The buyer’s solicitors will also pay over to us a deposit which will be held by us until the day of completion.
The buyer’s solicitors will then send to us a transfer deed so that the property can be conveyed to the buyer upon completion of
the house sale. We will then read through this document carefully and once we are completely happy that this is correct we will forward the same on to
you for signature. At this stage we will also request repayment figures from your mortgagees and prepare the final accounts (or completion statements).
On the completion day we will receive the balance of the sale price in return for which we will hand over the signed transfer
deed and title deeds to the buyer’s solicitors.
Finally on the day of completion we will arrange to repay your existing mortgages and pay the Estate Agents (where appropriate) and refund any surplus monies to you. If you are buying another property then the surplus monies will be transferred to your purchase file. We will send all monies to you on the day of completion by whatever means you require and write to you confirming that your sale has been completed – until next time when we hope that you will return to us!
Purchase
Once you
have accepted our quotation we will provide you with this firm’s terms of engagement and introduction to the conveyancing department. We shall liaise
with your Estate Agents (if applicable) and request a Memorandum of Sale from them which will have details of the vendor’s solicitors. We shall
then contact those solicitors and request a contract package from them. This package should contain the contract, plans of the property, copies of
deeds, office copy entries and completed protocol forms.
Following receipt of the contract package we will apply for necessary
searches which we feel are necessary to be carried out against the property you wish to purchase. We will also give you the option of having further
searches carried out at the property at this stage. Please note that if you are obtaining a mortgage, your lender may require us to carry out
additional searches (at your expense). We may use a local search provider in order to speed up the conveyancing process and keep costs at a minimum.
Once we have all appropriate documentation we will raise any additional enquiries about the property and chase the
replies. We shall let you have copies of the enquiries that we raise so you can see exactly what problems may have arisen and give you the opportunity
of asking any specific enquiries about the property which you may wish to raise, no matter how trivial you may think these are.
If you are obtaining a mortgage we would expect to receive your mortgage offer at about this time. We will read your mortgage
offer carefully and go through the same with you in detail. There may be special instructions which need your attention such as there may be a
retention of monies for works required at the property. Please note that you will receive a copy of the mortgage offer at the same time as us and you
must read this carefully.
Once we are satisfied with everything we will prepare a legal report on the property and send this
to you. We will also prepare the transfer deed and submit this to the vendor’s solicitors.
You will then be asked to
sign the contract, mortgage deed, transfer deed and stamp duty land transaction form. You may also then be asked to provide a deposit, typically
l0% of the purchase price. If you have a related sale we may be able to use the deposit that we receive from your own purchaser as the deposit on your
own purchase transaction. Contracts can then be exchanged with the vendor’s solicitors. A completion date will inserted within the
contract. The purchase is now legally binding.
Once contracts have been exchanged we can request your mortgage funds,
carry out final searches and let you have a final account or completion statement.
On the day of completion we will forward
the balance of the monies to the vendor’s solicitors and receive the deeds from them. We shall then attend to payment of all stamp duties and will
arrange to register the property into your name (s). Once your registration has been completed we will contact you and let you have a copy of the
documentation proving your ownership. This then completes the conveyancing process – until you move again, when we hope that you will return to us.
Remortgage
Once you have accepted our quotation we will provide you with this firm’s terms of
engagement and introduction to the conveyancing department. We will obtain certain information from you and request your title deeds from your mortgage
lender and a repayment figure to find out how much is owned on your current mortgage.
We will arrange for your mortgage offer
and all title documentation to be checked on receipt of same from your lender.
In some case it may be necessary to carry
out searches against the property (depending upon the lender). We will advise you of this at the appropriate time and inform you of the requisite fee
to be paid. We shall then forward the mortgage deed to you for signature and provide you with a completion statement.
Once the paperwork is returned to us together with any balance of monies (if appropriate) we will then arrange completion. On the day of
completion we will receive the mortgage monies, redeem any existing charges on the property and (if appropriate) forward to you any excess
monies.
We will then arrange to register the new mortgage at the Land Registry. Once the title has been
registered we shall let you have evidence of such registration and also provide evidence to your new mortgage lender. This completes the
re-mortgage process. If you decide to switch lender again, then we hope that you will return to us.
