1. Agree a price with the Estate Agentor seller
2. Provide Estate Agent with your Solicitor's details
3. Decide on your finance
4. Decide on a property survey
5. Your solicitor takes delivery of Contract, Deeds
6. The Local Authority Search
7. Any issues arising from the enquiries
8. The mortgage offer
9. Exchange of Contracts
10. Completion date
11. Signature of Documents
12. Completion and fees
13. After Completion
14. Move in!

1. Find your property and agree the price with the Estate Agent or directly with the seller.

2. Provide the Estate Agent with the name address and contact details of your Solicitors and the person who will deal with it there.

3. Decide on your finance and contact the preferred mortgage lender.


4. Decide if you want a full survey and discuss this with your mortgage lender. Most lenders will provide, at your expense, either a valuation survey, which really is for their benefit, or a full survey, at a higher cost, which is your survey. We urge you to have a full survey. This serves three purposes:

i) It will tell you if there are any defects in the building, which you should know about.
ii) It gives you ammunition to negotiate on the price if there were hidden defects that you could not have known aboutwhen you first made your offer of purchase.
iii) If there are hidden defects which have not been spotted by your surveyor but which you could not have known about, then, since you are entitled to rely upon your surveyor's expertise in preparing a survey, you might have a negligence claim against the surveyor if such defects should appear and prove to be expensive.


5. The seller's solicitor will deliver to your solicitor a Contract and Deeds package.


6. Your solicitor will need to order on your behalf a Local Authority Search which answers basic questions about the property and warns you if your particular property is going to be affected by major works such as new roads or if the property is subject to planning consent. However, be warned. It will not tell you if there are to be developments to the property next door, or behind and you may be advised to further investigate this possibility.
We also recommend Environmental and other searches which vary according to the property and which we will discuss with you.

7. Once the Deeds have been received your Solicitor will advise you on any problems that are revealed in the deeds, in the Local Search or of Planning Consents.


8. Whilst you are waiting for this information and the result of any further enquiries, your mortgage lenders will be inspecting and valuing the property, investigating your ability to pay the mortgage and will then make an offer which they will send to your nominated solicitor who will act on behalf of you and also on behalf of the mortgage lender in proceeding with the purchase.
We will ask you to cover the costs of obtaining theses searches.

9. Once all is in good order your Solicitor will then be ready to exchange Contracts. If you are just buying this is relatively straightforward. If you are selling a house at the same time it would normally be a client's preference that your Solicitor should arrange to effect a contemporaneous exchange of contracts on your sale and purchase and this can be very tricky. It is sometimes necessary to work hard to keep everybody happy and to persuade other parties to be patient if you are not quite ready so as to hold the chain of transactions together. When your Solicitor is ready to exchange you will need to pay a deposit, normally 10% of the purchase price. If you are selling the deposit you receive from your sale can be used as part of the deposit for your purchase. If the property has a very high value, or if completion is agreed to be delayed, it is sometimes possible to persuade your vendor or his/her solicitor to accept a deposit of, say, 5% rather than a 10% deposit. However, you should not rely upon this being possible without having reached agreement first and if finding a 10% deposit is a problem for you, you should raise this with your solicitor as soon as possible. The deposit needs to be in your Solicitor’s possession as cleared funds on the day of exchange and it is best transferred directly into your Solicitor’s bank account. If it is to be sent by cheque it should be sent at least 6 working days before contracts are to be exchanged. If your Seller agrees to accept a deposit of less than 10% you must be warned that if you fail to complete the purchase the contract will contain an obligation for you to pay the full 10% which will be recoverable from you by legal action if, having failed to complete, you have not paid a full 10% deposit. The contract will also provide for the seller to be able to make other claims against you in the event of your delaying completion or failing to complete. The seller will be entitled to be compensated for expenses and losses that the seller has suffered if you have not fulfilled your obligation under the contract.


10. Before contracts can be exchanged all parties need to agree on a Completion Date, which is the date when the rest of the money over and above the deposit and including the mortgage money will be transferred to the Seller and the keys will be handed over and you can if you are ready move in. This date has to be agreed at the time of exchange of contracts and you should think about what dates are convenient to you and how they will affect others by the time you are ready to exchange contracts. Between exchange and completion your Solicitor needs to carry out further searches at the Land Registry both on behalf of the mortgage lender and for you to ensure that there are no unexpected mortgages registered and that the parties to the transaction are solvent. Traditionally completion took place 28 days after exchange of contracts. Nowadays with technology and emails this time can be greatly reduced. Two weeks is comfortable, one week is possible, less than that is very stressful.


11. Between exchange and completion you would also have to have signed the mortgage deed usually at your Solicitor’s offices in the presence of a Solicitor and you will sign other completion documents. If the property is leasehold and you are acquiring a new Lease you will have to sign a counterpart Lease and that must be delivered to the freeholder before Completion.


12. On the Completion Date your Solicitor will transfer the money to the Seller’s Solicitors by automated bank transfer. Your Solicitor will therefore need to receive the money from your mortgage lender (usually sent early on the day of completion) from you (preferably received the day before) and your Solicitor will also need to receive payment for our professional fees and for the disbursements that your Solicitor will have incurred on your behalf, particularly the stamp duty and Land Registry fees. Unfortunately under new Revenue rules your Solicitor also have to ask you to fill in a complex stamp duty tax return which your Solicitor will assist you in preparing but which has to be signed by you.


13. What happens after completion? Your Solicitor will assist you in completing a Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) return and act in registering your title and when the title is registered at the Land Registry your Solicitor will send a copy of the deeds to you and to your mortgage lender to be kept as evidence of your ownership of the property.


14. And you move in!