The Conveyancing Process

Buying a new home is an exciting time but can also be overwhelming as there is a lot of legal paperwork to organise. In this article we aim to give you an idea of what happens in the conveyancing process and the timescales involved.

When you purchase a property there are usually a number of people involved, such as an estate agent, developer or housing association, a mortgage broker, a surveyor, a mortgage lender and a solicitor.  Each person taking part in the process is working towards the same goal….to get you moved into your new home.

When you instruct a solicitor to work for you, one of their first jobs will be to verify your identity, which is required by law, and if you are purchasing a property, they will also need details of your source of funds. In addition to this they will also need to collect payment for items they will need to buy on your behalf.

Most transactions take between 10 and 12 weeks from instruction to completion, especially if there is a chain. However, newbuild purchases usually have to proceed much quicker as housing associations impose a 28-day deadline for exchange of contracts, although if you are buying a resale property it can take a little longer as there is a lot more information required.

Following the initial identity and source of funds checks, the conveyancing process begins when the seller’s solicitor obtains a copy of the title to the property from the Land Registry and prepares a contract pack.  This pack is sent to your solicitor and includes the contracts, title and an official plan of the property, along with some information forms about the property and what is included which the seller has completed.  In the case of newbuild properties the contract pack will also include planning permissions and other documents regarding the construction of the development.

When your solicitor receives the contract pack, they will order searches, which are a standard set of questions sent to a number of different authorities. Your solicitor will then check the answers when they come back, although it is worth noting that some searches take a few weeks to process. For this reason, on some newbuild developments in order to speed the process up the seller’s solicitor will provide searches relating to the whole development.

After going through the contract pack and checking the title and other documents, your solicitor will raise any enquiries they have with the seller’s solicitor. It can often take a number of weeks before satisfactory replies to all these enquiries are received.

Most buyers will need a mortgage in order to buy their property. Your Lender will want to value the property you are purchasing before issuing you with a mortgage offer. Copies of the mortgage offer are sent to you and to your solicitor, who will double check that the offer complies with the Lender’s requirements. If you are purchasing through shared ownership, your housing association will also have to approve the offer.

Once your solicitor’s enquiries have been answered and they have received the search results and a mortgage offer, they will send you the contract for signing. At this point you will be asked to provide an exchange deposit. The seller’s solicitor will also send their client a contract for signing, and exchange of contracts will take place once everyone in the chain is ready.

Prior to exchanging contracts all the parties involved in the transaction need to agree a completion date.  However, if you are buying a newbuild property that isn’t ready yet, you will exchange on the basis that completion takes place once the property is built.

As we mentioned earlier, all of the different aspects of the conveyancing process can take several weeks, plus there is no set order in which the elements above are done. This is why some transactions take longer than others and why you need to be patient throughout the process.

Once contracts are exchanged and the deposit has been paid, everyone in the chain is legally bound to complete and can start to get ready for their move.

In the period between exchange and completion, your solicitor will arrange for your Lender to send them the mortgage monies and collects the final balance due from you. On the day of completion the money is sent to the seller’s solicitor and at the point it arrives the purchase officially completes. The seller’s solicitor calls the agent to release the keys and then you can finally move into your new home.

Find out more about the conveyancing process, by watching our short animation.