News

What to expect when buying a home

15th March 2024

When buying a home, especially for the first time, there can be a lot of anticipation around what to expect from the process. Gemma Beardmore, an Associate Solicitor in our Residential Conveyancing team, walks you through the process of purchasing a property through Myers & Co.   

 Stage 1 – Initial Steps

 Your offer to purchase has been accepted! You now need to instruct a conveyancer to act for you and guide you through each step of the conveyancing process. 

 The first step is to get a quote for the legal fees you’ll incur going through the conveyancing process. Once you have received and accepted our quote, we will open your file and allocate you a conveyancer. The conveyancer and their assistant will be your points of contact at Myers & Co as your purchase progresses. 

• You will then be sent an initial client care pack to complete. This can be completed via an online portal, or we can send it in the post if you prefer to work with hard copy documents. We will require a variety of documents from you to proceed, including proof of identification and evidence of the source of your funds for your purchase. We will also ask you to complete various forms including a Client Questionnaire, Joint Ownership Questionnaire (to confirm how you wish to hold the property if you are buying in joint names), Source of Funds Questionnaire and we will ask you to read and accept our Letter of Engagement and Terms of Business. We will review your completed forms and let you know if we require any further information from you. 
• We will ask you to pay the sum of £315 upfront to cover the cost of the initial searches and any other disbursements, including an online ID check. 
• If the purchase has been agreed via an estate agent, we will receive a Memorandum of Sale from them which sets out details of all the parties involved in the transaction, including the names of all buyers and sellers and details of the conveyancers acting for them. If there are no estate agents involved and the purchase has been agreed privately, we will need you to provide us with the name of the seller and the name of the conveyancer that they have appointed. 

 Stage 2 – Prior to Exchanging Contracts

 You’ve filled in your forms, ID checks have been completed and you’ve made your payment for initial searches. Now, we’re leading up to exchanging contracts.  

 Once we have details of the seller’s solicitors, we will request the draft Contract and supporting documentation from them. This will usually include copies of all title documentation relating to the property and copies of the Property Information Form, and Fittings and Contents Form completed by the seller. The Property Information Form is completed by the seller and provides information you’d need to know about the property e.g. any neighbour disputes, structural alterations, available guarantees etc. The Fittings and Contents Form lists the fittings that are included or excluded in the price of the property. 

• Once the draft Contract pack has been approved, we will obtain your authority to submit searches. If you require mortgage finance to proceed with your purchase, we will ask you for the name of your lender at this stage to ensure that we submit searches that meet your lender’s requirements. 
• The standard searches are as follows: Local Authority Search, Water and Drainage Search and Environmental Search. As standard, we also take out an insurance to cover any Chancel Liability. Depending on the area the property is in, we may also require additional searches such as a Mining Report or a Cheshire Brine Search, but your conveyancer will let you know if these are required.  
• If you are having a mortgage, the lender will appoint their own surveyor to carry out a valuation, and you will usually have to pay for this. Remember that this is a valuation for mortgage purposes only and not a survey. We advise you to appoint your own surveyor to carry out a survey of the property to ensure that the property is structurally sound and there are no issues that may affect your decision to proceed. 
• Your conveyancer will review the Contract pack, the search results and the mortgage offer and will raise any necessary enquiries with the seller’s solicitors. 

• We’ll report to you on replies received from the seller’s solicitors, the legal title you are purchasing and the search results. We’ll point out any issues or adverse matters that may affect your decision to proceed at the earliest stage possible. 
• We may need to report certain issues to your lender (if applicable) as we will also be acting for them in relation to the transaction. There may also be conditions in your mortgage offer that we need to satisfy. 
• If the property you are buying is leasehold, or is a freehold property on a managed estate, we will ensure that the seller’s solicitors obtain the necessary information pack from any landlord or management company involved. We will provide you with this and point out any post-completion fees due to the landlord or management company. These organisations usually charge fees to deal with any change of property ownership and may have to issue a certificate of consent to the sale to you. 
• Once we have received replies to enquiries, search results, mortgage offer and all title information we will send you the documentation for signature together with our report on title. The documents for signature will usually include: the Contract, Transfer Deed, Mortgage Deed (if mortgage funding is required) and a Stamp Duty Land Transaction Form (if the property is in England) or a Land Transaction Tax Return (if the property is in Wales). If you have any questions at any point then these can be dealt with via email, telephone, letter or a face-to-face meeting at our offices. 
• The documents will only become legally binding when contracts are exchanged. We ask for documents to be returned to us as soon as possible and we will hold these until you are happy to proceed to an exchange of contracts and a completion date has been agreed. 
• We advise you view the property again prior to exchange, as the property is sold in the state and condition it’s in at the exchange of contracts. We also recommend that you have the gas and electrics at the property checked by an appropriately qualified person before you commit to an exchange of contracts.  
• Once a completion date has been agreed we will ask you to transfer your deposit monies to us. 
• If you are buying using a mortgage, then we will apply for your mortgage funds from your lender via a form called a ‘Certificate of Title’. We can only request mortgage funds once we are satisfied that all queries have been dealt with, as by submitting the Certificate of Title we are certifying to your lender that the title to the property is good and marketable and we are not aware of any issues that need to be reported to them. We will request the mortgage funds to arrive with us on the working day prior to completion. This is to ensure no delays on the day of completion itself. 

 Stage 3 – Exchanging Contracts

 The time has now come to exchange contracts! This is where your completion date becomes legally binding.  

 Once your funds have been received and the chain is ready to exchange, we will phone you to obtain your authority to exchange contracts. If there is more than 1 buyer, then we will need to speak to all clients involved. 

• When contracts have been exchanged, we will inform you of this via telephone or email (whichever is your preference) and will also confirm exchange of contracts has taken place via a formal letter. Once contracts have been exchanged the completion date is legal and binding. 
• The Law Society Standard Conditions of Sale, which apply to residential conveyancing transactions, confirm that the risk for buildings insurance passes to the buyer on the date that contracts have been exchanged. If you are having a mortgage, then you must ensure that your buildings insurance has a start date of no later than the date of exchange. Please obtain quotes for buildings insurance prior to exchange to ensure that you can source buildings insurance cover at a reasonable price that meets your requirements before you commit to an exchange of contracts. 
• You will need to make removal arrangements (if necessary).  

 Stage 4 – Completion

 Time to collect your keys! Completion day is where you can start moving in to your new home.  

 On the day of completion, we send the balance of the purchase monies to the seller’s solicitors. Once the seller’s solicitors have received the funds, they will confirm receipt to us and will advise what time they expect the seller to provide vacant possession of the property and handover keys. 

• If an estate agent is involved in the sale, then keys will normally need to be collected from their offices. If the sale has been agreed directly between yourself and the seller, then you will need to arrange to meet up and collect these from them. 
• Once completion has been confirmed we will date the Transfer and Mortgage Deed (if applicable) with the completion date and forward the Stamp Duty Land Tax/Land Transaction Tax and payment due to the appropriate tax authority on your behalf. 

 Stage 5 – After Completion

 While you’re busy unpacking and deciding on your first DIY project, your conveyancers are working behind the scenes to ensure everything has been registered correctly. 

 If a landlord or a management company is involved, then we will liaise with the necessary parties and obtain any certificates that are required from them. 

• We will apply to register you as the owner of the property at H M Land Registry. Please be aware that the Land Registry currently have a very large backlog of applications, and it may take them some months to process our application. Applications to register unregistered properties for the first time, or applications that affect part of a larger title (such as the purchase of a newbuild property) are currently taking upwards of 2 years to be dealt with. This is because these applications are more complex and involve the Land Registry creating an entirely new title number for the property on their database. 
• Once the registration has been completed the Land Registry will issue the Title Information Document to us. This will show the address of the property, you named as the proprietor, and it will also refer to any mortgage that you have used to finance your purchase.  
• We will send a copy of the completion documents to you, and a copy will also be issued to your lender if you have used mortgage finance to purchase the property. 

 Based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, our specialist residential property solicitors provide conveyancing services throughout Staffordshire and Cheshire.  To find out more, you can contact us on 01782 577000 or you can get in touch via Residential property.