Frequently Asked Questions
You need a conveyancer to buy or sell property in order to examine the legal title, ask or answer practical and legal questions about it and on a purchase to carry out an appropriate range of searches.
How long will it take?
This is difficult to quantify. For example if your transaction is in a chain of associated sales and purchases then there are many people involved, each with their own timescale and financial arrangements. Your conveyancer is best placed to estimate the time to completion once all the details and dependencies of your transaction have been established.
What about my financing of the transaction or my mortgage?
Your conveyancer is not responsible for your financial arrangements. We will assure that you have taken financial advice either from a financial advisor or directly from your mortgage lender. It is for you to carry out your own arithmetic order to check that you can afford the property you are buying and it is for you to be satisfied with the terms and conditions of the mortgage that you obtain.
Your conveyancer will check the conditions of the mortgage offer but only insofar as these affect the legal process and not with regard to the financial aspects.
Do I need to visit your office?
It is not generally necessary for you to visit your conveyancers office. It is important for your conveyancer to check your identity by seeing appropriate original documents.
Some mortgage lenders require their mortgage deeds to be witnessed by a solicitor, a licensed conveyancer or a qualified legal executive and if you obtain such a mortgage product, we will tell you if this is necessary.
We will tell you which documents you need to sign personally and return to us before your transaction can proceed. Please return the documents, through the post, as quickly as you can and clearly address your letters or your envelopes to the individual dealing with your case or so as to ensure it is promptly dealt on receipt.
This is the most common question we are asked and there is no answer to it until contracts are exchanged. A lot of work has to be done and in broad terms it will be at least 28 days after the transaction has begun before specific dates can usefully be discussed. We know that many of you wish to move quickly but it is equally important to move safely.
When should I make my removal arrangements?
You should not make any practical arrangements to move until contracts are exchanged. It is not possible to be precise in this respect and it is important to exchange contracts first with a specific date even if that is a week or two later than originally envisaged in order to avoid uncertainty disappointment.
What time can I expect to move in?
On the moving day itself money has to be transferred electronically between various solicitors’ accounts and if there is a chain of dependant transactions, this can take some time to go through. It is not wise to make arrangements to move too early in the day and, again, in order to avoid disappointment and as a general rule of thumb, you should expect to move out by lunchtime and move in by teatime. You should enter into a clear agreement with your removal company, unless you are moving yourself, so as to avoid the anxiety of having to pay additional sums of money if the removers are not able to complete the job by a certain time in the afternoon.
On completion day monies are transferred between 9.30 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. and because your conveyancer is in the hands of the banking system, the conveyancer cannot give you a cast iron guarantee about specific timing.
What does exchange of contract mean?
This is the time when you become committed to complete your purchase. You should not make your removal arrangements before contracts are exchanged. A date will be fixed for you to move out or move in when contracts are exchanged and this will be anything between a week and a month after contracts have been exchanged.
This is the day you must move out or you move in. It is better to have a gap between exchange of contracts and completion. The reason for this is that you can make your removal arrangements secure in the knowledge that it will actually happen on the day.
Why do I have to have searches?
We are under and obligation, both to you and your mortgage lender to carry out a certain range of searches as may be applicable to the particular property.
Searches only have a limited life and this varies between 21 days after the search has been made and three months. Even if you have recently had a transaction concerning your property, a renewal of the search for a further search may be needed.