House Sale & Purchase

Buying a home is one of the most important financial purchases you will ever make. We will guide you through the process and help you make the right decisions to ensure that the transaction runs as smoothly as possible.

At Lee Chadwick we understand that buying or selling your home can be a stressful time. Our aim is to make this as easy as possible for you. Our experienced residential conveyancing lawyers have many years’ experience in dealing with all types of property all over the country, and can guide you through every step of the process, with pragmatic advice should any problems arise.

As well as buying and selling homes, both freehold and leasehold, we can also advise on the legal aspects of other property matters, including:

• Buy to let
• Shared ownership
• Retirement properties
• Mortgages and remortgages
• Transfers of equity and gifts of property
• Creating, varying and terminating rights of way and other property rights
• Residential development and plot sales
• Declarations of Trust setting out unequal shares of ownership in a property

Whatever your requirements, you will have direct access to the lawyer dealing with your case, and we are happy to give initial estimates of fees without obligation.

An overview of the various stages of a conveyancing transaction and the scope of our services are set out below.

The stages of a typical freehold purchase are:

• The first stage is for us to examine the Contract Pack that is provided to us by the sellers solicitors.  We will then raise enquiries of the sellers solicitors if there are any matters that require further clarification or if there are any further documents that we need to see.  At this stage we recommend that you apply for your mortgage if you will need one if you have not done so already.
• Once we have received the contract pack we can apply for the usual searches to include a local search, a water and drainage search and an environmental search.   It usually takes around 3 weeks for these searches to be obtained and they provide useful information about whether there are any adverse planning issues affecting the property you are proposing to buy, whether the road that your property is on is being maintained by the local authority, whether the property is connected to mains water and drainage and whether there are any environmental issues affecting the property
• Once we have received the results of  enquiries we have raised, the search results and your mortgage offer (f you will be using a mortgage for the purchase) we will prepare a formal report for you setting out the information that you will need to know so that you can make an informed decision before you agree to continue with the purchase.
• We will prepare and submit your stamp duty return for you to HMRC based on the information that you have provided to us, we will pay the tax for you once you have completed your purchase.
• When you are ready to proceed we will send you a Completion Statement with our invoice setting out how much money we will need from you to complete your purchase for you.  We can then move to EXCHANGE OF CONTRACTS, this is the point at which you are legally committed to the purchase and on exchange of contracts a deposit is paid and a date is fixed for COMPLETION.  This date is agreed by both parties on Exchange of Contracts. Completion is the date on which the purchase monies are sent by us to the sellers solicitors and the keys are made available to you so that you can move in.

The stages of a typical freehold sale are:

• We will send you some forms to complete that ask for information about the property that you are selling and these form part of the the Contract Pack that we prepare and send out to your buyers solicitors.
• We will then expect to receive enquiries from your buyers solicitors about the property and we may need your assistance in replying to them.
• Your buyers solicitors will inform us when they are in a position to move to EXCHANGE OF CONTRACTS, this is the point at which you are legally committed to the sale and on exchange of contracts a deposit is paid and a date is fixed for COMPLETION.  Completion is the date on which the purchase monies are received by us from the buyers solicitors and you have to move out and the keys are made available to the buyers so that they can move in.  This date is agreed by both parties on Exchange of Contracts.

A LEASEHOLD (usually in relation to the sale or purchase of a flat but other properties can be leasehold in certain circumstances) transaction involves additional enquires about the lease and sometimes a fee is payable to the managing agent to provide the information and to register the new owner with them after the purchase has been completed, these fees vary and we will inform you of these costs as soon as we know how much they are but they are typically anywhere between £100 to £500.

You may require a DECLARATION OF TRUST which sets out the details of unequal ownership of a property, for example if you are buying a property with another person and you wish to own the property in unequal share then this document will set that out and regulate the arrangements for the running of the property and what happens if it is sold.  We charge an additional fee to prepare a declaration of trust for you of £475 plus vat of £95.  Our fee covers the preparation of the document for you and advice in relation to its implications.

You may require or be asked to provide an INDEMNITY INSURANCE POLICY which provides limited cover in the event that there is a legal issue with the title to the property that you are buying or you may be asked to provide one as a seller.  The cost of these policies varies and we will always provide you with a quote for the cost of one if it is needed and advise you what it it covers.

Contact Katherine Robertson on 01993 703272 for further details