Conveyancing FAQs
23 Nov 2024
Buying a home is one of the most significant financial commitments you are likely to make in your lifetime; this can feel like a daunting experience.
We have answered five common conveyancing questions, hopefully giving you a better understanding of the process.
1 - What is Conveyancing?
It's the rather old-fashioned name that describes the legal work involved in the buying and selling, re-mortgaging, transferring the equity and registration of properties.
2 - How long does it all take?
This is probably one of the most challenging questions to answer, as it often depends upon many factors.
These may include:
- Waiting for mortgage offers to be issued.
- Have others in the chain have sold their property and the position of their buyers etc.
- Are any survey or structural problems can also delay matters.
A standard transaction, with no unforeseen complications or delays arising, will take around 12-18 weeks. However, it can be done faster with the cooperation of all parties involved throughout the process.
3 - What are the common causes of delay?
You can rest assured that we will always endeavour to drive the transaction forward and chase-up other conveyancers and third parties that affect the transaction. However, we cannot provide any guarantee at the outset that everything will be in place to complete by any particular date.
We advise you to be very wary of anyone who thinks they can. Here are the common causes of delay:
- Length of the chain involved – a delay at one point in the chain will delay everyone else.
- Mortgage applications may take longer than usual to process- perhaps because a reference required by the lender from a third party is not immediately forthcoming or because the mortgage lender is unusually busy.
- Mortgage offer issued with unforeseen conditions.
- Searches or enquiries reveal something unexpected.
- Someone else in the chain does not want to proceed as quickly as the others.
4 - What happens if someone in the chain pulls out?
If you find yourself in this situation, it is worth finding out exactly why they have pulled out - it may be that it is related to financial issues, and it may be that the other parties in the chain would be willing to help out to see the chain stay alive.
We have seen cases where each party in the chain took a cut in the sale price of a few thousand to ensure that someone was able to move and not break the chain. These exceptional cases require a lot of goodwill from all the parties concerned.
5 - When will my contract become legally bound?
Only when contracts have been exchanged is the transaction legally binding. Until then, either seller or buyer can seek to renegotiate the purchase price, completion date, or other terms discussed or pull out the transaction altogether, without obligation to compensate the other party.
Once the exchange of contracts has happened, everyone will know where they stand and when they will be moving. If you have a mortgage, they will require at least five working days between the exchange of contracts and completion.
In practice, this period can sometimes be shorter, but there is an increased risk of something going wrong. The buyer's Conveyancer will not exchange contracts until they are satisfied with the results of all their legal searches and enquiries, any conditions and legal requirements on the buyer's mortgage offer have been satisfied, and the buyer is happy with their survey results.
If the buyer is dependent on the sale of another property or the seller is dependent on another purchase, they will need to exchange contracts simultaneously on the dependent transactions.
We suggest that you do not book a removal van until you have exchanged, as we cannot guarantee a completion date until the exchange has occurred.
If you'd like to learn more about Conveyancing or any other legal processes. Our website is jam-packed with Free downloadable guides. Head over to our client information page now.
www.sortlegal.co.uk/information