Residential Conveyancing

Selling your property

When dealing with your sale there are a number of steps that we take on your behalf. These differ if the property you are selling is Freehold or Leasehold.

In either instance, however, we will take initial instructions from you by email, phone or in person, including:

• Names and addresses
• Property details to be sold
• Estate agent’s details (if applicable)
• The buyer’s details (if you know them)
• Name of mortgage lender and account number (if applicable)
• Details of where your deeds and documents for the property may be held and anything else, we feel relevant to your transaction

We will then send you a Client Care pack including a transaction questionnaire and a request for your identity documents. Please return these to us as soon as possible to avoid any delays with your transaction.

Please note we carry out checks on your ID documents to satisfy the UK Anti Money Laundering Legislation.

Once we have this information, we can obtain the title information from the Land Registry and prepare the draft contract.

If the title deeds of your property are unregistered (you may have owned the property for a long time and the deeds have never been to the Land Registry for registration) we will prepare an Epitome of Title, which is the history of your property.

If the property is leasehold then we will need to obtain a Leasehold Information Pack from your landlord/management company so it is essential that you provide us with their details as soon as possible. We may need a payment from you to cover the cost of this.

Once the buyer’s solicitors have the title information and leasehold information (if applicable) they will then raise enquiries with us which we will deal with. We may need to contact you to assist with our replies or this may be something we can deal with without any further information.

We will obtain the necessary figures required to ensure that the service charge is paid up to date and deal with any apportionments of the ground rent and service charge.

If you have a mortgage on your property, we will contact your lender to obtain a redemption figure, as your mortgage will need to be repaid on the day the sale of your property completes.

Once all enquiries have been answered and we are satisfied that the transaction is ready to proceed we will contact you to arrange for the signature of the contract and transfer documents.

We will then discuss with you dates for exchange of contracts (legal commitment) and completion date (moving day) and once agreed, we will exchange contracts and notify you once this has happened.

On the day of completion, we receive the sale price from the buyer’s solicitors and then deal with the redemption of your mortgage, payment of estate agent’s fees (if applicable) and account to you for the proceeds of sale due to you. If the property is leasehold, we will pay any apportionments required to the management company and deal with any notices that may be required under your obligations under any lease.

It is on this date that you will need to vacate your property and hand over the keys to the buyers.

Please note if you have a Help to Buy Equity Loan on your property that we need to redeem on completion of your sale, this will be additional work and there will be additional fees involved. Please let us know as soon as possible to avoid any delays with your transaction.