What to Expect When You’re Expecting… To Move House

12 Mar What to Expect When You’re Expecting… To Move House

On day two of National Conveyancing week, we take a look at the ‘pre-exchange’ work that is carried out, once a conveyancer has been formally instructed by their client.

Step 1 – Issuing the draft Contract pack

The Contract Pack is prepared by the seller’s conveyancer and is sent to the buyers conveyancer once it is ready.

It will include but is not limited to:

• Draft Contract
• Title documents
• TA6 – Property Information Form
• TA10 – Fittings and Contents Form
• TA7 – Leasehold Information Form (where applicable)

Step 2 – Searches

Having received the Contract Pack, the buyer’s conveyancer will usually then order their ‘searches’. These are various reports they obtain to help them then ‘report’ to their client and/or their clients mortgage lender on the legal state of the property they wish to buy.

The normal searches will include:

• Local Authority – obtained from the council where the property is. It covers things such as planning, roadways, and regeneration areas.
• Water & Drainage – detailing how mains water and also sewers get to and from the property. It is provided by the water company that serves the area in question.
• Environmental – covering things such as flood risk, land contamination, and former uses, for example, historical industrial use.

Other searches may be carried out depending on where in the country you are buying. For example, a mining search may well be done in Cornwall given historical tin mining.

Searches will cost around £200-400 all in, but this very much dependent on the area in which you are buying.

Searches can take anything from a couple of days to several weeks (local authority searches in particular).

Step 3 – Enquiries

Once the searches have been submitted and results received, the buyers conveyancer will review these, together with draft Contract, title, and other documents enclosed with the draft contracts pack. This is a process whereby any queries or questions that arise out of all of the above can be put to the seller’s conveyancer and must be replied to honestly and openly. If a seller tries to hide something that they know is an issue, it may be a breach of contract or misleading on their part, resulting in legal action after completion.

The enquiries stage can be time consuming and frustrating for all concerned – even the conveyancers, so patience is key! What enquiries need to be raised depends entirely on the particular property.

Step 4 – Mortgage

It is for the buyer of a property to find, apply for, and secure a formal mortgage offer. Once a buyer has completed this process and a mortgage lender is happy to lend on the property, the mortgage lender will issue their mortgage offer. The conveyancer will need to check through this to ensure compliancy with the mortgage lenders offer conditions and once they are satisfied that all lenders conditions have been dealt with, they will be able to ‘certify title’ with the mortgage lender. The mortgage offer must be in place and all mortgage conditions satisfied before exchange of contracts.

Prior to issuing a mortgage offer, a mortgage lender will carry out a basic valuation on the property, to ensure that the property offers sufficient security. A buyer should not rely upon the mortgage lenders valuation of the property and it is recommended that during the early stages of a purchase, a buyer instructs a surveyor to carry out a survey on the property, to rule out any potential issues with the property, before any legal commitment to purchasing the property.

Step 5 – Exchange of Contracts

The national average for the above steps to be completed is 18 to 20 weeks. This is a very rough guide and your own sale and purchase will depend upon its particular circumstances, and of course any chain you are in.

With those key stages completed, exchange of contracts can happen. You will at this stage fix your completion date; the day of your actual move and the buyer will pay a 10% deposit to the seller (via the conveyancers), which the buyers will lose, should they fail to complete.