7 Proven Steps to Speed Up Your Conveyancing Process

Buying and selling a house can often be an emotional roller-coaster ride and a stressful affair for most home movers. It involves a combination of mixed emotions from feeling excited and exhilarated about selling your home at the right price to frustration and impatience trying to find your new dream home and moving in. This process can be long and tiring with endless asking of, ‘why hasn’t my conveyancing solicitor contacted me?’

Sometimes it might feel like it takes forever to finalise the deal even if a professional property solicitor is involved in the transaction. Property transaction should be treated like a jigsaw where are the pieces should fit together in order for the transaction to be completed. Once the seller and buyer have reached an agreed price, each party would instruct their own conveyancing solicitors. This is where the real formalities of transferring the ownership of a property really begins. A standard transaction could take a number of months to complete.

Luckily, there are several measures you can take to make sure your property transfers go as smoothly and efficiently as possible. In this article, we’ll provide seven proven steps that can help you speed up the conveyancing process.

1. Appoint an Experienced Conveyancer to handle the Conveyancing Process

Hiring an experienced conveyancing solicitor to guide you through the conveyancing process is essential if you want to speed things up. An experienced conveyancing solicitor will be know what to look out for, even by simply inspecting the preliminary details of a property transaction which will then allow them to anticipate problems which could potentially help save lots of time towards the later parts of a transaction.

2. Have All Necessary Documents Ready to Go.

There are some common documents which apply to all conveyancing process transactions. You can start collating these standard documents and information well in advance of any formalities taking place.

All individuals must provide Photographic Identification Documents to their respective conveyancing solicitors. This is usually in the form a valid, photocard driving license or an in date passport. With current back logs at the relevant government departments, it could take a number of weeks or even months before an application is processed and the appropriate documents are issued. If you do not hold valid identification documents, you should start making arrangements to do so as soon as possible.

The conveyancer acting for a purchaser is heavily regulated to ensure that all funds being contributed towards a property transaction has been fully documented and verified. This is typically achieved by reviewing full bank statements over long periods of time. We have detailed some of these due diligence processes on our article. Depending on your individual circumstances, your conveyancer may request up to 12 months worth of bank statements for each account from where you will be making payments. Since most banks now operate predominantly online, it would take a number of weeks before a bank can process and produce all these statements for you. If you need to obtain these documents, then you should attend to arranging for these as soon as possible.

The same applies if you are receiving any financial help from Family Members as Gifted Deposits. They too will have provide evidence of source of funds and it would be sensible to inform these parties to start obtaining statements and Identification documents as above.

If you are the seller, it might also be worth you putting together a bundle of documents such as certifies, guarantees and warranties in connection to any work you have carried out at the property. Typically, your purchaser’s solicitors will always request copies of these and in certain instances, it would take a number of weeks for you to organise duplicates certificates.

3. Use Modern Communication Tools like Email and Telephone for the Conveyancing Process

Utilising modern communication tools like email and telecommunication can be a great way to speed up the conveyancing process. Making sure transactions are handled electronically can cut down on significant delays due to paperwork arriving in the post and time lost awaiting appointments to be agreed on unnecessary meetings.

4. Request Property Searches Early On in the Conveyancing Process.

Property searches are an absolutely essential part of the conveyancing process. Where you are using mortgage finance, it is a mandatory requirement that property searches are carried out. Even if you are a cash buyer, your conveyancing solicitor will almost always recommend you carry these out as there may be information revealed within the search results which would warn you of significant issues with the property you are looking to purchase.

The speed at which search results will be returned is entirely dependent on the Local Authority where the subject property is located and their workloads at any given point in time. We are aware of some local authorities currently who return search results in as short a time frame as two weeks to others taking a number of months.

Searches must be paid for, upfront and their fees are non-refundable. Some clients wish to hold off from commissioning property searches until they have received the result of a Home Buyers Survey Report or Mortgage Offer. Both these aspects take a very long time to complete and delaying commissioning property searches until these arrive will naturally delay your conveyancing formalities significantly.

Therefore if you can afford the possibility of losing the search costs in the event you are unable to secure a mortgage offer or having to abort the property transaction as a result of an adverse survey result, instruct your conveyancer to commission your property searches as early in the property transaction as possible.

5. Instruct a Surveyor As Soon As Possible

Unlike property searches, a Home Buyers Survey is not mandatory whether or not you are using mortgage finance. That said, we would always recommend you carry one out. The reason why is because, conveyancers asses the Title issues relating to a property (issues revealed in Deeds). They will not and nor can they asses the physical structure of the property since it falls beyond their level of expertise.

A surveyor will be able to identify any inherent physical defects with the property which would mean that you could either decide to abort from the purchase altogether or revisit and revise the original offer price you offered the sellers to offset any costs you will have to cover to put these issues right, on completion.

As property searches, surveys take a while to be returned. At the time of writing this article, the average time it takes for an average Home Buyers report to be returned by a surveyor is 3-4 weeks. You do not need to appoint a conveyancer before you can instruct a surveyor. Therefore, it is worth you instructing a surveyor as soon as your offer has been accepted.

6. Obtain a Mortgage Decision in Principle

Most clients wait for their property offer to be accepted before they approach a mortgage lender of a financial broker. Although it may seem obvious to think that logic would dictate one having arranged finances and work out what they can afford before committing to a purchase, we see countless instances where purchasers only approaching lenders having already commenced legal proceedings.

Especially with the current turbulent nature of financial markets and banks carefully considering all applications for mortgages from an affordability perspective, mortgage applications take a very long time to progress to the offer stage.

You should therefore always obtain a Decision in Principle (DIP) from one or few mortgage lenders before you even consider looking for suitable properties. Typically, a DIP is valid for around 6 months and act as a pre-qualified application subject to a property valuation once you have source a suitable property. Arranging a DIP would therefore easily reduce the time it takes for you to obtain your full mortgage offer at least by 2-3 weeks.

7. Attend to requests from your Conveyancing Solicitor as quickly as possible

Lastly, this point may sound evident however again once that is easily overlooked. Conveyancing as with any legal matter entails a lot of information be supplied to you by various parties, especially by your own conveyancer. Under these circumstances, it is very easy for specific requests for information in particular by your conveyancer to be overlooked.

For instance, your conveyancer might forward you various reports for you to read accompanied by some documents which require your signatures and returning. A minor over sight here such as you not returning the requisite signed documents could quickly lead to creating significant delays towards the later parts of a transaction – to the point where this may even prevent an exchange/completion taking place.

Look through all communication you receive from your conveyancer carefully. If you are unsure, always ask questions from your conveyancer who will be happy to talk you through what you need to do.