Residential Conveyancing

Buying a property

When dealing with your purchase there are a number of steps that we take on your behalf. These do differ if the property you are buying 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 purchased
• Estate agent’s details (if applicable)
• The seller’s details (if you know them)
• Your new mortgage lender (if applicable)

We will then send you a Client Care pack including a transaction questionnaire and a request for your identity documents and a payment on account. 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 and we also need to carry out checks on the source of any funds that you are using towards your purchase transaction.

Once we have this information, we can move forward with your purchase and would expect to receive the draft contract and any supporting title and property information from the seller’s solicitors.

We will carry out the searches relevant to your property and report these to you.

We will raise any necessary enquiries with the seller’s solicitors in relation to the title of the property and your search results. We will report all the information you need to proceed with your purchase.

Once your mortgage offer is received from your lender (if applicable) we will review the offer and deal with any conditions and go through the offer with you.

As soon as we are satisfied that the title to the property you are buying is good and marketable and we are happy for you to proceed, we will arrange for you to sign the contract, transfer and mortgage deed and any other documents required for the transaction.

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.

Prior to the completion date, we will arrange for all monies needed for the transaction from both you and your lender to be in our account.

On the day of completion, we will send the purchase price to the seller’s solicitors and once this has been received by them, the keys will be released to you and we will notify you that the property is yours.

Following completion, we will then deal with the submission of a land transaction return with HMRC and pay any stamp duty land tax that is due. We will also deal with the registration formalities at the Land Registry to ensure that you are registered as the new proprietor of the property. On completion of the registration we will provide copies of the updated title documents to you.

Please note if you are buying a leasehold residential property there will be additional steps we need to undertake. These include:

• Reviewing the lease and advising you on this
• Reviewing the Leasehold Management Pack and Leasehold Property Enquiries which will have been received from the seller’s solicitors and raising any enquiries
• Advising you and dealing with any apportionments of service charge and ground rent that may be due
• Serving the relevant notices on the landlord and management company that are required under the terms of the lease. Please note there will be additional charges payable by you for the notices and we will advise you as and when we receive this information