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Buying a Home Buying a new home is one of the most important transactions of your life. We hope that that the information on this page will help you through the procedure and make it less stressful for you. Making an Offer As soon as the offer you have made on a house has been accepted it is said to be 'sold subject to contract'. This means the house is reserved for you until you have signed and exchanged contracts with the Seller. However, up until exchange of contracts, either of you can pull out of the deal. If you find a house to buy before you have sold (or the other way around), ask how long the other person is willing to wait. Appointing a Solicitor You need to appoint a solicitor to organise the paperwork (Deeds etc.) Surveys It is very important (unless the property is new) that you organise a survey of the property. The Seller will not compensate you at a later date for things which you should have known about. Most people will be purchasing with the help of a mortgage from a bank or building society. Lenders will carry out their own survey but this is normally only a valuation survey and will not be detailed. Before Exchanging Contracts As your solicitors, we will receive a draft contract and copies of the title deeds. There will also be a Seller's Property Information Form, which will set out details such as any recent building work, disputes or notices about the property (amongst other things) together with a Fixtures, Fittings and Contents Form. This will set out the items being left behind at the property by the Seller. We will then go through these documents very carefully and raise any additional enquiries which we consider necessary. We will also organise a local search if the one included in the Home Information Pack is too old to use or contains insufficient details. This will deal with planning issues, road adoption, designated uses for the area etc. It will not detail any future (or indeed present) plans for any land/properties in the area and you must alert us if you have any concerns about how any nearby land will be used. We can then carry out, at your expense, a further search called a plansearch. We might also do an environmental search as this will reveal any past or present industrial use in the area, the likelihood of any flooding, the whereabouts of radio/telephone masts and other information. A drainage search might also be necessary. All these searches do take time, but are a vital part of the procedure. Unless you are a cash Buyer, we will receive a formal mortgage offer from your lender. We check the detail of the mortgage and prepare the mortgage deed. The Contracts When ready we will invite you into the office to go through all of the papers with you, although we will have previously sent you copies. At this meeting it is essential that you raise with us any concerns you have. If you are happy to proceed we will ask you to provide us with a deposit cheque and to sign the contract in readiness for exchange of contracts. We will discuss your preferred completion date and also ask you to specifically confirm that you will be able to provide us with the necessary balance to complete the transaction. We will also go through your mortgage offer with you in detail and satisfy ourselves that you can afford the repayments and understand exactly what commitment you are taking on. The Deposit This is designed to ensure that Buyers are committed to the transaction. A deposit is usually 10% but if you are unable to afford this most Seller's Solicitors will accept a reduced deposit. However there is a clause in the contract stating that if you pay less than 10% and then withdraw you will be liable to the Seller for the amount needed to "top-up" the deposit to 10% and they could sue you for that balance. If you are buying a new house it is rare for a developer to accept less than 10% and so you must budget for this. If you are buying and selling you may be able to use the deposit from your sale as the deposit on your new home. Exchanging Contracts We are now ready to exchange contracts but will only do so after you confirm you are happy to proceed and that you agree to the completion date. It is, at this stage, that you are legally bound to buy. We exchange contracts with the Seller's solicitor by telephone. The Seller's solicitor then sends their signed contract to us and we will send your signed contract and deposit to the Seller's solicitor. Now both sides are legally bound to the transaction. Before Completion We apply for your mortgage advance from your lender. The money will be sent by telegraphic transfer and to guarantee being able to complete on the agreed date we apply for the funds to be received the day before. Your interest will run from the date we receive the funds but this small additional cost is nothing compared to the costs involved if we do not receive the funds on the completion day in time. If your home is a brand new property your lenders may carry out a final inspection before the mortgage funds are released. Prior to completion we will send you a completion statement setting out the sums we have paid and received before or on completion. If a balance is due from you we need it three working days before completion. Completion Once we have paid over the money (by telegraphic transfer) to the Seller's solicitor they will tell the Estate Agent to release the keys to you. You can then move in and put the kettle on! After Completion We will ask you to sign the Transfer Deed and a Stamp Duty form. These will be dispatched to you shortly after completion. We then pay the stamp duty and register the transfer into your name at H M Land Registry. Once this is completed, which may take two or three weeks, we will forward the relevant title deeds to your mortgage company and send the rest to you for safekeeping. |