With land registry searches, your solicitor confirms that the property seller is the legal owner of the property you are buying. For this, they check the ‘title register’ and ‘title plan’ at the Land Registry.
A water authority search finds out the source of the water that is supplied to the property you are buying. In case, there are any public drains on the property, it is mentioned in the water search report. This is essential to know as it might affect any building work or an extension done in the future.
Chancel repair searches establish if you will be liable for the cost of repairs to a parish church. A couple of decades ago, property owners rather than monasteries used to take the responsibility of repairing church chancels. After the law change in October 2013, the church must now establish and lodge liability with the Land Registry. However, in special cases, the church can still insist a property owner to take the liability to repair even if the liability has not been registered.
Pre-contract enquiries are done before the contracts are exchanged. This is the process that involves raising enquiries related to the title, rights and obligations over the property, and/or underlying land. Many of the enquiries are based on the Law Society’s standard forms.
Following is the list of common pre-contract enquiries that are related to:
The term local searching is derived from local search, which means asking or researching about some set issues concerning the property you are to purchase. In the research, the conveyancer will be asked for a fee by the local authorities. The fee is paid for the search of the property. The fee will be requested from you by your conveyancer.
During the search, delicate and vital issues may be brought up about the property to be purchased. It will not reveal details such as your plans in developing the property or its expansion thereof. The search is likely to take up to twenty days at most.
After the searches are complete, your conveyancing lawyer will review the details of each search and then send you a detailed report highlighting any potential issues that require your attention.
The issues may include flood risks, proof of subsidence in the area, any mandatory purchase orders or enforcement notices, and any sort of construction to be undertaken by the local authority, which could affect the property.
If anything comes up in the searches as stated above, you can use this opportunity to renegotiate the price you are paying for the property. For instance, if you have to pay for maintenance of a private drainage system you can ask the seller to reduce that amount in the selling price.
After both, you and your mortgage lender are satisfied with the searches, both the parties in the sale can move to the next stage, i.e. the exchange of contracts.
Each local authorities have their own cost to search and can have very different systems to produce them.
In some of the cases, a few legal companies have national agreements with search companies. Therefore, they get the benefit to pay a fixed price for the search, regardless of their own prices.
Title searches are the checks made of the Title Register and Title Plan. Your conveyancing lawyer will ask you to purchase both documents through the Land Registry website.
The title register will tell you the following things about the property:
The title plan is a map that will give you the following information:
The general boundaries of the property
These days, most titles are registered electronically at the Land Registry. You can obtain a copy of the register from the Land Registry office directly. The Digital registry has replaced title deeds.
It will have all details, including the details of the owner of the property or land and any other relevant information along with any charges against the property. A copy of the register is the only document you would need to sell your property. Your lawyer can obtain this document from the Land registry which he would need to prepare the contract.
If in any case, your property is not registered electronically, and you are unable to locate your deeds, you will need to instruct your lawyer to assist in assembling documents to replace the deeds.
The property searches include the following:
We will suggest you book removals once you have exchanged contracts on either your sale or purchase or both. This is because you as a seller/buyer are not in a binding agreement to proceed with the transaction until contracts have been exchanged. In this condition, either party can pull out, otherwise decide to change the moving date.
Yes, depending on the type of relationship shared by both parties. If the buyer or seller has worked with the solicitor in the past, then there is no problem. However, being the solicitor does anything, both parties have to agree to their representation. At times there may be limitations to representation in the case it’s a mortgage plan. The lender may insist on separate representation just to avoid conflict of interest.
Conveyancing documents are those that are produced during the course of buying or selling a property for the clients. There are a number of documents that are produced in a property transaction, such as
Drafting a contract is quite straightforward and is usually done in one to two hours depending on the length of the document. But before drafting a contract, the conveyancer needs time to determine which document needs to be put in the contract. Hence, the time is consumed for collecting, comparing, and reviewing all of the paperwork about the property. The process may take a month or two.