What to expect when you are buying your home

• Step 1: Instruct a solicitor

  You’ve scoured the listings, attended the viewings and you’ve finally found the perfect place to call your next home. So what now? The next step to go ahead with the purchase is to appoint a solicitor to help with the sale. Your solicitor will keep you right throughout the process and will represent your interests throughout, so you want to make sure you’re happy with your choice. Take time to consider what services are being offered, what the costs are and what budget you have available.  You don’t necessarily want to automatically choose the cheapest conveyancing service, instead make sure the service is the right one for you. 

• Step 2: Returning your client care documents

  If you want to work with our team here at Prosperity Law, we’ll send you a pack of client care documents. This will provide us will all the information we need to help support you with your purchase. Once you’ve signed client care paperwork, identity documents and questionnaire, we can begin acting for you. Sometimes there is a small sum of money needed upfront to cover any initial payments such as searches and electronic ID checks. We do this to make sure all your costs are addressed at the start, and you won’t have to keep making payments to us or experience any unwanted delays. We’ll always keep you informed of any costs to you throughout the process.

• Step 3: Memorandum of sale

  The next step is to share our details with the seller’s estate agent so they can send us a memorandum of sale. This document is a written confirmation of all the details of the sale, which we need to start the process. When we have this from the estate agent, we’ll contact the seller’s solicitor directly for the contract pack.

• Step 4: Receiving the contract pack

  To avoid any unforeseeable issues, we like to be proactive for our clients. When we receive the contract pack from the estate agent, we’ll do some initial title checks so we can advise you early on of any additional steps we may need to take in the process. If we do need any additional information, this could impact on the timescales, so at this point we’ll be able to give you a better estimate of when we expect the purchase to be complete.

• Step 5: Ordering searches

  Conveyancing searches are simply some enquiries we’ll make on your behalf to any third parties who might hold information about the property you’re looking to buy. It can take a few weeks for the search results to be returned to us but we’ll review the information we find and advise you of any appropriate next steps.

• Step 6: Raising enquiries

  Our next step is to carry out a full detailed title check of the deeds, contract, and the property forms we’ve received from the seller. If you have any questions or we spot anything we want to ask about, we then have the opportunity to raise enquiries with the seller’s solicitor. This can include asking for additional documents or questions about the property. We’ll usually raise these within 7-14 days of receiving the contract pack depending on the complexity of the contract.

• Step 7: Receiving your mortgage offer (if applicable)

  At this stage we want to make sure your mortgage offer is in place. This should be provided by your lender for you to share with us, your conveyancer will let you know if they haven’t received their copy.

• Step 8: Reviewing your file and preparing your property report

  Once the seller’s solicitor has replied to all of our enquiries, we will do a full review to check we’re happy and have all the information we need, we’ll then prepare a full property report for you. This will explain the title, summarise the search results, and anything else that affects the property. You’ll need to take the time to read and review the report to check you are happy with everything before proceeding, but we’ll be there to advise you. If you have any questions just get in touch with your conveyancer and they’ll be happy to help.

• Step 9: Signing your contract

  Once we’ve approved the contract, we’ll send it to you for signature. We’ll advise you on the terms of the contract but if you’re happy with the final details, you’ll sign the document and return this to us. Again, this can be done in a few ways to make the process as easy for you as possible. Send the signed contract to us by post or using a land registry compliant electronic signature – just let us know if you want to sign the contract electronically. You are not tied in to the contract at this stage, your conveyancer will speak to you and let you know before exchanging the contract with the seller.

• Step 10: Exchange

  Once the date has been agreed with all parties and the legal matters have been concluded we’ll exchange contracts with the seller. At this point you and the seller are both tied in to the contract so you’ll need to complete the transaction on the agreed date and all other contractual terms will come into force. Typically, this will happen within 6 to 8 weeks of the contract pack being received but your conveyancer will be able to advise.

• Step 11: Preparing for completion

  To keep things running smoothly, we’ll prepare as much as we can before the completion day. You’ll need to sign a transfer deed, SDLT Form, and if applicable a mortgage deed. You’ll also be given your draft completion statement with a note of any outstanding payments due to us. This will hopefully leave you all the time you need to prepare for your move.

• Step 12: Completion day

  Today’s the day you’ve been waiting for! As soon as we have the full purchase monies required (your deposit, and the money from your lender), we will send this to the seller’s solicitor. The seller’s solicitor will contact the estate agent to release the keys to you once they have received the funds and when we have confirmation it’s time for you to collect the keys.

• Post completion

  A few days after completion we will arrange to send you all of your completion letters and ask for any feedback on your experience throughout your transaction. There are a few additional administrative tasks needing completed at this stage so we’ll help you with these as well. We’ll get the property registered in your name at Land Registry, submit your SDLT return, and pay any tax due. We may also need to contact other third parties to confirm you are the new owners, such as a managing agent, your conveyancer will let you know we’re doing this if this is the case. Once the property is registered, we’ll forward you a copy of the up to date property register and any other property documents that the seller has provided us with.