Property > Purchasing Property

We hope that the following brief outline of the legal side of a purchase will be of assistance to you. Obviously, your own purchase may be slightly different, so if you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

On your instruction

Once you have instructed us to act for you, we will write to the solicitors acting for the Seller of the property to ask them for the contract documentation. Once the contract documentation is received (including a plan of the property) it will be necessary for us to put in hand various searches.

These searches will not be made until such time as payment is received from you and will take the relevant authorities 2 -3 weeks to process. You may wish to delay payment of the search fees until you have received a satisfactory survey/mortgage offer but this will obviously result in a small delay whilst you wait for your search results.

The Seller's solicitors should also provide a list of items to be included in the sale price and a copy will be sent to you to check. This document will form part of the contract and it is important that you do check it carefully.

On receipt of your mortgage offer

Once we have received:

a) a copy of your mortgage offer

b) all necessary documentation from the Seller's solicitors

c) the results of your searches

We will make an appointment for you to come in and discuss your purchase. Normally, the deposit (being the difference between the amount you borrow on mortgage and the purchase price or alternatively 10% of the purchase price) will also be required at that meeting. We will discuss a suggested completion date with you and assuming that there are no queries which need to be resolved, you will be asked to sign the contract. Assuming the other parties in the chain are ready, we will then proceed to exchange of contracts.

Exchange of contracts

Exchange is the point at which you become legally obliged to purchase the property and it is at this time that a suggested completion date becomes final. Please do not book holidays, removals etc until exchange has taken place as suggested completion dates often change. It will not be possible to change the date once exchange has taken place. If for any reason you are unable to complete on the date specified, you will be liable under the Contract to pay interest and possibly expenses incurred by the Seller by way of compensation. It is obviously vital that a realistic completion date is set and normally one to two weeks are required between exchange of contracts and completion to finalise the legal side. Please bear this in mind when discussing dates with the rest of the chain.

Following exchange of contracts

We will request the mortgage monies from your Lender. The nearer to the beginning of the month you complete, the greater your first mortgage payment will be as an additional charge will be made for the period between the date on which you complete and the end of the month.

Following completion, your Lender will write to you to inform you of the amount of your first repayment and when it is due. Any new Life Assurance will need to be put on risk with effect from the date of exchange and you must therefore ensure that any life policies you are having arranged are ready to be put into effect before committing yourself to exchange.

We draft a Deed of Transfer, which is approved by the Seller's solicitors. This will then need to be signed by you, along with the mortgage documentation. Further searches are made and it may be necessary for you to certify that entries revealed by the searches do not relate to you.

Funds required

Between exchange of contracts and completion, we will write to you with our bill and a statement showing the financial side of your purchase and the amount due from you in order to complete. It is vital that funds are received at least 4 working days before completion so that we have cleared funds to be able to complete.

On the day of completion

We send the balance purchase monies to the Seller's solicitors through the banking system. It can take some time for the monies to arrive and keys will not normally be released to you until the Seller's solicitors have received confirmation and receipt from their bank. It is therefore better to arrange your removals for later in the morning so that you are not left waiting for the keys to be released.

Following completion

Title to the property will be registered in your name at HM Land Registry and once this has been completed, the title deeds will be sent on to your Lender. If there is no mortgage on the property, the title deeds will be held by us in our strong room until such time as they are required by you. Normally, copies of the Registers of Title will be sent on to you and which you should keep in a safe place to remind you of the covenants and other matters affecting the property