The CLC (Commercial Law Chamber) lawyer is subject to robust regulation and is well-versed with the UK laws. These lawyers ensure your best interests are served and they protect you if something goes wrong.

The Code of Conduct of CLC has guidelines based on six principles on how Licensed Conveyancers should work and behave. These principles provide you the rights when you hire a Licensed Conveyancer. Under these rights, your conveyancer is supposed to treat you fairly, talk clearly about the costs of the legal work. You also get the right to complain if something goes wrong.

Some searches are recommended by the solicitor for all purchases. Other searches are asked by the mortgage lender to protect them from any liabilities that the property may have. But all searches will be carried out by your solicitor. 

The term chain is used if you are awaiting money from the sale of your house before you can buy another. There is a possibility of you being in a longer chain if you are buying a house from a seller who is buying their next house from people who are in turn planning to buy a property. It means you are at the ‘bottom’ of the chain; the seller is the ‘second’ in the chain, and the last seller is at the ‘top’ of the chain. If anyone in the chain falls through, the chain collapses. The replacement is found immediately by others in the chain or else it leads to the cancellation of the process.

Chain-free or no chain is a situation when no one in the chain is dependent on another person buying or selling their property.

You will be called a chain-free buyer if:

• You are buying for the first time.
• You have already sold your property and received the funds to buy a new fixed asset.
• You don’t need to sell a property in order to finance the purchase of a new fixed asset.

You will be called a chain-free seller if:

• You don’t need to buy another property as your new accommodation after you sell your current property. It could be because you are selling property that was either rented out, inherited from a relative, or you are moving into rented accommodation.

Whether you are a seller or buyer, you have to pay the conveyancer whom you hire. For example, you will need to hire a conveyancing solicitor to do the legal legwork for you when selling your home. The task will also include drafting the sale contract and negotiating the terms with the buyer. 

Then the solicitors of each party will agree on a completion date and oversee the exchange of contracts. For all their effort and services, you have to pay conveyancing costs to your solicitor. 

Similarly, if you are purchasing a home you have to pay the solicitor for various types of legal tasks. Your solicitor will negotiate the terms with the sellers, request different types of searches, exchange contracts, transfer the funds, and at last register you as the new owner of the property with the Land Registry. This is why you would need to pay conveyancing fees to your solicitor as the charge for these services.

Usually, searches do not take much time. A couple of days is enough as most of the searches are done by the conveyancer. The Local Authority Search, the most important one, takes around two weeks because it requires the help of the local authorities. The search duration can be even more if the local authority has a backlog.

Joint tenancy is the situation when two or more people are the owner of the same property together. The owners of such property are called joint tenants where each has equal rights and responsibilities.

When purchasing property, joint tenancy offers equal rights and responsibilities to all parties for the purchased real estate.

Joint tenants receive an equal number of rights in the property, but there are some limitations on how they can use their shares. It also involves the most critical condition of ownership, which is the right of survivorship.

There are two types of ownership in joint tenancy:

• Joint tenant
• Tenants in common

You have to decide the type of ownership you want when you are buying, inheriting or becoming a trustee of a property with someone else. You need to tell HM Land Registry about the choice of your ownership at the tie of property registry.

The type of ownership you choose will affect your rights over your property or what you can do with the property if you had a broken relationship with a joint owner, or if one of the owners dies.

Yes, they are different in many ways.

Joint tenants are also sometimes called ‘beneficial joint tenants’. Under this ownership, you have the following rights:

• Equal rights to the entire property.
• The property automatically gets transferred to the other owners if you die.
• You are not allowed to pass on your ownership of the property in your will.

Tenants in common provide the following rights over your property:

• Own individual shares of the property
• The property doesn’t automatically get transferred to the other owners if you die.

You are allowed to pass on your share of the property in your will.

We don’t ask you to pay the deposit during the first stages until you have verified the property. You need to be sure that the property in question is fair, in good condition, and you are interested in purchasing it.

After that, you can sign the contract confirming to agree with all the seller’s terms then you can send us the deposit. We will also ensure from our end that we can now exchange contracts. It is a crucial stage where you need to be cautious before contract exchange and not leave out any question as after signing the contract, both seller and buyer become legally binding.