Looking to Sell your Property?
A few simple steps from Carol Scott of our Southampton team to help you ensure the transaction gets underway smoothly….
As well as liaising with your estate agent, it is always advantageous to contact your Solicitors at an early stage to ensure they are well placed to progress the transaction quickly once you agree a sale.
Firstly, you will need to contact the Solicitors to obtain a quote for their fees for the conveyancing process. This quote will include their legal fees, VAT and the anticipated disbursements (this is a payment made on behalf of a client to a third party, for example copies of Register Entries and the Title plan from the Land Registry which costs £6).
Once you have decided which firm you will be using, please let them know!! This will enable them to open a file of papers and send you the terms of engagement letter together with details of the identity verification process you will need to go through to comply with the anti-Money Laundering legislation. Please sign and return the terms of engagement letter and complete the necessary ID checks for your Solicitor. This means that once they receive the memorandum of sale from the estate agent, they can act straightaway.
Your Solicitor will also send you a Property Information Form and a Fittings & Contents Form to complete and return. These are standard forms approved by the Law Society and are used in all residential transactions throughout England & Wales. You will need to work through and complete these and supply the completed and signed forms back to your Solicitor, together with copies of any documents referred to in the forms.
It is very likely that your buyer’s Solicitor will ask for copies of recent boiler service records, installation documents and guarantees for replacement windows, doors and boilers plus any planning permissions or building regulation approvals you have obtained. If you supply these to your solicitor at the outset, they can be passed to your buyer’s Solicitor with the initial Contract pack which saves a considerable amount of time once the transaction is underway.
Only once your Solicitor has received the signed terms of engagement letter, evidence that your ID checks have been completed together with your completed Property Information Form and Fittings & Contents Form, are they able to issue the Contract pack to the buyer’s Solicitor.
This is the start of the process and enables the Buyer’s solicitor to check the legal title and apply for Searches. As you can see, by engaging with your Solicitor and completing and supplying the necessary paperwork simultaneously with marketing your property, it really can shave weeks off the transaction time.
If you are looking to sell your home our Conveyancing Teams are here to help. Please give us a call on 02380632733 or email us at
enquiries@c-g-m.co.uk for a no obligation quotation.