A Conveyancing Guide for Sellers
This guide provides a brief overview of the conveyancing selling process that Waters & Co., will undertake on your behalf if you decide to use our local High Street services.
Once a sale is agreed you will need to instruct a solicitor. If you are selling via our Waters & Co., Estate Agency department, we carry out the legal process and the legal fees, for the sale, are covered by our inclusive estate agency fee. Otherwise, we are happy to send you a worst case scenario estimate of likely costs and disbursements (expenses) with no extra charges hidden in small print, so there are no nasty shocks at the end of the transaction. Do always check the small print when obtaining an estimate of costs, particularly from on line conveyancers, as they often have a “headline” price which looks very attractive but, when all the hidden extras are added, eg. an additional fee for dealing with any mortgage, become much less competitive.
We will send you a retainer letter and Property Information Forms and Fixtures and Contents form for you to complete and return. It is recommended that you address this paperwork promptly to avoid slowing down the process. At an early stage you should be thinking about sorting out any planning paperwork, guarantees and warranties which need to be sent with the Property Information Form.
You will need to provide us with any mortgage account details relating to the property. We will obtain an initial redemption statement from the lender to ensure the sale proceeds are sufficient to redeem your mortgage upon completion.
Once we have received the signed forms from you and evidence of your identification, we will prepare a sale contract pack and send it to the buyers’ solicitor.
We will deal with all enquiries from the buyers’ solicitor, legal and non-legal and may need to liaise with you in respect of this. Once all enquiries have been satisfactorily addressed the buyers’ solicitor will submit a Transfer document to us and we will ask you to sign both the contract and the transfer in readiness for the sale completion.
When all parties in the chain, if there is one, are ready to make the transaction legally binding by exchanging contracts, we will discuss a completion date with you. This has to be a bank working day; not a weekend. Once a date is agreed by everyone, after getting your authority, we will commit you to the sale and the completion/move date will be legally binding on all parties.
You must vacate the property, on the agreed date, ideally no later than noon to 2pm and hand over the keys to us or your chosen estate agent. You need to read meters and notify household utilities and the Council Tax office of the change of ownership. You will be expected to leave the property in a clean and tidy condition and remove all rubbish, including contents of lofts, sheds and garage(s).
On completion day/moving day, we will receive the purchase monies from the buyers’ solicitor and use them to pay off your mortgage, our fees or the estate agents and legal fees and expenses. Any balance will be sent to you. We will release keys or we will contact the estate agent to authorise the release of keys to the buyer.
The above events can take, on average about 10 to 12 weeks for a freehold property. A leasehold property may take longer, particularly when management companies are involved and/or if there is a particularly long chain of transactions.
This is a brief overview of a basic sale transaction. Procedures may vary between solicitors and conveyancers.
