Fast, efficient and friendly service

We understand that moving house is a very busy time and can border on being stressful occasionally. Our lawyers and support teams will provide you with a personal service. A dedicated solicitor will look after your work from start to finish, and you will be given access to them by direct email and telephone. Our approach is both pragmatic and efficient. Our dual aims being to best serve your interests and make sure your transaction is kept on track.

A significant proportion of our work comes to us from previous clients that recommend us, or from others in the property market that know our approach to client service. This is a source of satisfaction.

Purchase of the Property: the key stages of our conveyancing work when acting in your purchase include:

(a)    receiving your instructions, carrying out Know Your Client due diligence, issuing a formal Client Care Letter with the terms of engagement for your approval and once signed and returned one copy to us, we will liaise with the conveyancers for the seller confirming our instructions and requiring a draft contract documentation from them;

(b)    investigating the title to the property, to include:

(i)     carrying out searches on the property such as a local authority search, environmental search, drainage and water search, flood search, chancel liability search and any other search which may be specific to the location of the property such as mining search, highway search etc. and the searches at average take between two to three weeks;

(ii)    analysing the search reports and raising pertinent enquiries of the seller’s conveyancers and this can take one to two weeks from the date of receiving the contracts;

(iii)    reviewing replies given by the seller to pre-contract enquiries which can take about a week;

(c)    negotiating a purchase contract;

(d)    negotiating a transfer document;

(e)    advising you in respect of your mortgage offer, if applicable;

(f)     reporting to you on title as well as the lease and the leasehold management information (if the property is a leasehold) and answering any further or specific questions you may have and getting the contract, transfer and other relevant documents duly signed by you in readiness for exchange of contracts under your authority and obtaining required funds/deposit from you following our satisfactory checks under applicable Anti-Money Laundering regulations;

(g)    proceeding to exchange of contracts and then completion of the purchase and generally it takes four to six weeks for a straightforward transaction to mature to the stage of exchanging contracts, although in complex cases or owing to factors not in our control, this timescale can take longer;

(h)    transferring funds by telegraphic transfer to the seller’s conveyancers;

(i)     preparing and submitting to HM Revenue & Customs the appropriate Stamp Duty Land Tax return on your behalf if instructed by you to do so in accordance with these terms of engagement and legally this needs to be done within fourteen days of the completion date; and

(j)     paying the applicable SDLT to HMRC withing fourteen days of the completion and submitting application to HM Land Registry to register the transfer deed and the mortgage (if applicable) at the Land Registry and this needs to be done soon after the completion date.

(k)    Updating you once the title registration at the Land Registry has been completed and providing you with the amended title documents.

Sale of the Property: the key stages of our conveyancing work when acting in your sale include:

(a)    receiving your instructions, carrying out Know Your Client due diligence, issuing a formal Client Care Letter with the terms of engagement for your approval and once signed and returned one copy to us, we will liaise with the conveyancers for the buyer confirming our instructions and seeking confirmation of their instructions;

(b)    collating all the necessary title and other documents and information from you and preparing a contract bundle to be sent out to the buyer’s conveyancers and this can take about a week after receipt of all the relevant documents and information necessary for preparing the contract bundle;

(c)    negotiating with the buyer’s conveyancers to finalise the sale contract;

(d)    negotiating a transfer document;

(e)    replying to the pre-contract enquiries of the buyer’s conveyancers and where necessary, taking feedback from you in answering those enquiries;

(f)     if the property is subject to a mortgage, obtaining a mortgage redemption statement from the lender and sharing the same with you for your approval;

(g)    if the property is leasehold such as an apartment, then we obtain leasehold information pack from the freeholder or the management agent and share the same with the buyer’s conveyancers and deal with any further enquiries they may have in relation to the lease and the management of the property under the terms of the lease and once the contract, transfer and any other applicable documents have been approved between the conveyancers for the seller and the buyer and the buyer’s conveyancers have confirmed their ability to proceed to exchange of contracts, then we invite you to sign the approved documents and obtain your authority to exchanging contracts for an agreed completion date – all this process can at average take four to six weeks save for complex cases or factors not in our control and of course we will keep you posted of the progress;

(g)    sharing a completion statement with you for your approval and under your authority, we will proceed to exchange contracts (which makes the sale and purchase binding on both the seller and the buyer);

(h)    completion on a completion date agreed in advance between the seller and the buyer and this is the stage when the title is actually transferred to the buyer and if applicable, vacant possession of the property is delivered to the buyer;

(i)     on completion, transferring funds by telegraphic transfer to the mortgage lender to redeem all the mortgages over the property and then transferring the net sale proceeds to you as per the agreed completion statement;

(i)     sending your executed transfer and any other applicable documents with the buyer’s conveyancers enabling them to register the title to the buyer’s name at HM Land Registry.