The Steps to Your Home Sale with a Local Property Solicitor

So, you’ve decided to sell your home and move on to something bigger or smaller, something more luxurious or something simpler to manage. It’s an exciting decision to make, but you need to be prepared to wait a while for those dreams to come to fruition.

From the day you decide to sell your home and move, to the day you actually hand over the keys and move out, selling a home can be a lengthy process. Even the most straightforward of home sales can take around three to five months from initial listing to completion. It can take even longer if you’re in a chain, or if there are any complications with your property, such as leasehold status or major survey issues.

That’s why it pays to have the experienced, expert team at Holdens Law on your side. We’ll work hard to keep your property sale moving, so you can get moving as quickly as possible.

Conveyancing

As soon as you’ve accepted an offer on your home, you’ll need to appoint a local property solicitor, such as Holdens Law, to act on your behalf. With 150 years of knowledge and experience of processing properties in the Lancaster and Kendal area, you can trust us to take care of all the legal paperwork involved in transferring the ownership of your property, liaising with your buyers’ solicitors throughout the process.

Property conveyancing can take anything from six weeks to several months depending on your property, your buyers and whether or not your sale is part of a chain. There are several key steps along the way:

• TA6 Property Information form – your local property solicitor will send you a form to complete giving details about your property. This includes boundaries, any known problems or disputes, details of any conversion or extension works, any previous environmental issues and any rights or informal arrangements that exist. It’s worth taking your time to complete this form as fully and honestly as possible, as this will avoid delays later in the conveyancing process.
• Local searches – your buyers’ local property solicitor will conduct a series of searches, including a local authority search and an environmental search to ensure there are no issues that impact your property.
• Survey – your buyers will also organise a survey of your home to check its condition.
• Final negotiations – there may be some final price negotiations based on the results of the survey and searches. These are normally handled by your estate agent, however your local property solicitor may need to arrange indemnity insurance to cover certain property issues.
• Drawing up contracts – once all the checks have been done, and the final sale price has been agreed, your local property solicitor will draw up the contract for sale. Both buyer and seller need to sign this contract ready for exchange.
• Exchange of contracts – this is a major milestone in the sale process. Once contracts have been exchanged, the sale, and the sale price, are legally binding. A completion date is agreed when the contracts are exchanged.
• Completion day – this is the day that your buyers pay the balance for your home and take ownership. You will move out and they will move in. Completion usually takes place around one or two weeks after exchange of contracts, but it can take place on the same day under certain circumstances.
• Final settlement – once completion has taken place, your local property solicitor will pay your estate agent, and take their own fees, before arranging to pay you the balance. (If you’re using your local property solicitor for your onward purchase too, they will arrange payment for your new home, as well as any stamp duty that is due).

How Holdens Law can help

Choosing the right local property solicitor can make all the difference to the speed of your sale, as Jemma Higson, from the Holdens Law conveyancing team explains:

“Conveyancing is all about communication,” she says. “At Holdens, we work hard to keep the process moving by staying in constant contact with you, and with your buyers’ solicitors. We know from experience where conveyancing can get stuck and a sale can stall. We push to maintain momentum at these key points to ensure that we get your sale completed as quickly as possible.”

We outline the conveyancing process in detail on our website, or to find out more about how Holdens Law can help with your property sale, get in touch today.