Buying Your Home

Once you have instructed us, we will send you a copy of our explanatory leaflet describing the steps that are taken to purchase your new property.

We will also need to find out some more information about the property and your circumstances. To help us in asking the right questions of the seller's solicitors, we will send you an Information Form to fill in and return to us.

In order to comply with money laundering regulations we are obliged to check your identity. We will send a Client Identification Form to you and ask you to provide documentation to comply with the regulations. We will also undertake an electronic identity check.

The seller's Solicitors will send us a copy of the Energy Performance Certificate, some Information Questionnaires completed by the Seller (including a list of fittings such as carpets, appliances etc., which the Seller intends taking or leaving) and a Contract. We will also carry out a Local Authority Search, Drainage Search and an Environmental Search. In order to obtain these searches we will request £300 on account which can be paid either by cheque or by calling us with your card details.

We will read through these carefully and ask any more questions that are necessary bearing in mind the information you will have given us when returning your form. We will report to you on the documentation and ask you to confim whether you have any queries on the copy documents.

You will probably be obtaining a mortgage to help pay for your new property. While we are checking the searches and documents received from your seller's solicitors, your mortgage company will liaise directly with you concerning your mortgage offer. A few weeks after you apply for your mortgage, you should receive a formal written offer. We will also receive a copy and will check with you that the terms and conditions are what you expected. You should also check with the mortgage company as to their requirements regarding property and life insurance. If you are arranging your own property insurance this should be ready to be placed on risk on exchange of contracts and must be acceptable to the mortgage company.

When all our enquiries have been answered, the Search results received and your mortgage offer confirmed, we will send to you the Contract to sign. If you wish to have an appointment to discuss any papers in person this can be arranged during normal office hours.

We will also ask you to place us in funds for the deposit payable on exchange of contracts. The deposit normally requested by your seller's solicitors will be 10% of the purchase price. However, if you have a high percentage mortgage we can try and negotiate a smaller deposit with the seller's solicitors. If you are selling a property, it may be possible to use the deposit we receive from your Buyers towards the deposit payable on your purchase.

Once the seller and everyone else in your "chain" has signed and returned their Contracts and deposited monies to their solicitors, and once everyone has agreed a moving date (which we call the Completion Date), contracts are exchanged.

At this point you are legally bound to buy the property and the seller is legally bound to move out and transfer ownership to you on the Completion Date.

Between exchange and completion, we collect the mortgage monies from your mortgage company, arrange for you to sign the final papers, carry out checks to ensure the sellers have no hidden mortgages that they have not told us about and provide you with a Financial Statement confirming what additional monies we will require from you prior to completion, including Stamp Duty Land Tax, Land Registry and Legal fees.

On the Completion Date we pass the monies to your seller's solicitors and you then collect the Keys from the Estate Agents.

After completion we pay any relevant Stamp Duty Land Tax to the Inland Revenue, and arrange for the Title Register to be transferred into your name at the Land Registry. Once registration has been completed we will send you a copy of the new Title Register.