15th October 2024

What is the role of a solicitor when buying a house?

 

Buying a house is one of the biggest investments you will make during your lifetime, and we aim to make this process as smooth and stress free as possible for our clients.

We would advise you to get in touch with us to obtain a quotation for our services either when you begin your search for your new house, or when you have put an offer in for a property so that there are no delays once your offer is accepted.

 

Stage 1- Offer Accepted

Provide the estate agent with our details for them to make contact with us and to provide us with the memorandum of sale which has all parties’ details.

Stage 2-  Onboarding Process

As part of our standard onboarding process, we will send you the following documents for you to complete in order to provide us with all of the information we require –

  • Client questionnaire – this will ask for all of your personal details so that we can contact you throughout the transaction;
  • Purchase questionnaire – this will provide us with more information about the property you are purchasing and notes any concerns you may have about the property;
  • Stamp Duty Land Tax questionnaire – this is used to calculate the amount of Stamp Duty Land Tax you will pay on your purchase of your new home;
  • Source of funds questionnaire- we require this to ascertain how you will be funding your purchase, such as if you will be obtaining a mortgage over the property or obtaining any gifted deposits.

Stage 3 – The Conveyancing Process

We would then contact the sellers’ solicitors to request they send us the draft contract package which includes the title deeds, property information forms and a list of items at the property which the seller will confirm if these are included in the price, excluded or the seller is willing to sell for an additional amount. If you are purchasing a leasehold flat, we will also request copies of the lease and details from any management company or landlord in respect of the ground rent and service charge.

We will then submit for the usual property searches such as the local authority, environmental and drainage searches which will reveal more information about the property you are purchasing.

At this stage if you are obtaining a mortgage offer, we will receive this directly from your chosen bank. In most circumstances the bank will instruct us to also act on their behalf in this transaction, and if we have to report anything to them, we will obtain your consent to do so, ie if you are obtaining a gifted deposit this will need to be reported to the bank.

We will then carry out our due diligence and review all the documentation provided, the search results, the results of any home buyer survey you have obtained and raise our queries with the sellers’ solicitors.  If there is anything specific of concern that you have raised with us, we will include these questions within our queries to the sellers’ solicitors.

Stage 4 – Exchange of contracts

Once all queries have received satisfactory responses, all of the lender’s requirements have been satisfied, and all source of funds checks are complete we will request for you to provide the deposit sum to us. If you are also selling a property, we can use the deposit received on your sale for your purchase if the sum is sufficient. At this point we will also send you our report on the property documents, searches, and any mortgage, request for signed documents, and ask you for a proposed completion date. If there is an onward chain the completion dates must be agreed by all parties.

If you are happy to proceed, we will then exchange contracts, which means that you are in a legally binding contract to purchase the property on the proposed completion date. If for any reason you do not want to go ahead and complete the purchase, there are penalties that can be imposed such as losing your 10% deposit payment.

Stage 5 – Completion

 We will provide you with a completion statement at this point which will show the balance of funds required from you for your purchase and will request the necessary funds from any mortgage lender in readiness for completion. We will confirm if there is any Stamp Duty Land Tax payable on your purchase and will send you the land tax return for signature as the transaction must be reported to HMRC in all cases.

All funds must be received prior to the agreed completion date so that we can complete your purchase. Once the funds have been sent across to the sellers’ solicitors and they have confirmed receipt of these, they will inform the estate agent to release the keys to your new home!

Stage 6 – Registration

We will then apply to the Land Registry to register you as the owner of the property along with confirmation of your mortgage. Proof of your ownership will be sent to you once registration has been completed which can take up to 12 months. If you need proof of ownership during this period we will send you a copy of the transfer document which confirms the date you purchased the property.

 

To contact a member of our Residential Property team, email info@bussmurton.co.uk or call 01892 510 222.

Simran Sanghera-Phillips

Simran Sanghera-Phillips
Solicitor