You have found your ideal house, put an offer in, and now all you need is a conveyancing solicitor. There are various firms offering conveyancing services, operating either online, on your local high street or some even major global corporate firms. The level of service you receive varying from firm to firm, depending on experience and expertise on property transactions since most firms account conveyancing (or property related transactions) for around 30-40% of their annual turnover while the remainder comes from specialist matrimonial, litigation and wills and probate related transactions. This short article looks to shed some light on what a conveyancing solicitor do, working for a specialist conveyancing firm as Express Conveyancing.
What does a conveyancing solicitor do for the most part of the day, if you are selling a property?
Your conveyancer would have by now contacted the Land Registry for the title deeds for the property if you have not supplied these. Using the information from the title deeds, your conveyancing solicitor then prepares ‘Draft Contracts‘, which will be sent to your buyer’s solicitors. Conveyancers also spend a lot of time, responding to any questions your buyer’s solicitors have regarding the property you are selling, contacting mortgage lenders for settlement figures and liaising with estate agents (if any) to speed up the process. Once the buyers are in a position to finalise matters, your conveyancer will ‘exchange’ contracts with the buyers solicitor to formalise the transactions into a legally binding contract.
What does a conveyancing solicitor do for the most part of the day, if you are buying a property?
Your conveyancing solicitor will look after and handle all your legal documents for you. It is the responsibility of your conveyancing solicitor to ensure the property you are looking to purchase has a marketable title. If you are purchasing a property with a mortgage, then in most cases, the lender would instruct your conveyancing solicitor to act on behalf of them as well. Once the title has been diligently checked and reviewed, your conveyancer will raise any enquiries with your seller’s solicitor and request formal responses, until receipt of which the purchase transaction can not proceed further.
Your solicitor will spend time finalising contracts, chasing your seller’s solicitors for responses to enquiries, contacting the local authority for results from locality searches and arrange various documents be signed by you as the client for most of the remaining time.
Your conveyancing solicitor will also ensure any special conditions or criteria, specified by you mortgage lender has been complied with and also have a mortgage deed executed (signed) by you as the client.
Once the results or responses, to the enquiries raised in connection to the title have been received from your seller’s solicitors, and of course assuming these are all satisfactory, your conveyancing solicitor will contact you to collect the deposit to exchange contracts.
Buying or selling a house (or in some cases both at once) is a very stressful process. Our friendly team of conveyancing experts having helped thousands of property buyers and sellers are always happy to help.
Why not give us a phone call on 0203 375 2187 today to have a friendly, no-obligation chat about how we can help with your big move?
