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Never Again

Whether purchasing or buying houses people often say to me that the whole process was extremely stressful and they never want to do it again. While human nature allows us to forget and we often do things again and again that we swore we would never do there are some things that can be done to alleviate the stress involved in the sale and purchase of a property.

By far the most stressful situation occurs when a person has to buy and sell at the same time, as people often find themselves in a train situation where they cannot sign Contracts for Sale on the property they want to buy until they have received back signed Contracts for Sale from the purchaser on the property that they are selling.

So if you are thinking about buying and selling a property it may help you to first consider the legal process involved.

TALK TO SOLICITOR AT START

When selling a property the seller will normally have put in a huge amount of work in preparing the property for sale, sourcing an auctioneer etc before they approach their solicitor. I would suggest that it would be no harm to have a quick chat with your solicitor before putting the property on the market so that they can:

• Run through the stages involved
• Discuss whether any works have been carried out to the property which might have required planning permission or retention, if planning permission was required and not obtained. It is often the case with a lot of the second hand homes we sell that a kitchen or bathroom extension has been erected a number of years ago to the rear of the property. These rear extensions are normally exempt due to their size but a Certificate of Exemption from an architect or engineer with normally be required by the Purchasers solicitor
• Take up your title documents from your lending institution so that Contracts fort Sale can be drafted without delay when a purchaser is located. In particular, if you are using a different solicitor then the solicitor who purchased the property, I would advise that the title documents should be taken up at an early stage so that they can be inspected to ensure that the title is in order

WHEN ARE YOU BOUND

When buying or selling it is important to know when each party is actually bound to buy or sell.

When purchasing a property, once you have decided to buy the next step is to give a booking deposit to the auctioneer. It is important to realise that the booking deposit is really only a gesture to show that a purchaser is interested and does not bind him in any way. The purchaser can get his booking deposit back at any point up to the time that he signs Contracts for Sale.

Once the booking deposit is given the sales advise note is sent to both solicitors and the Vendor's solicitor then issues the Contracts for Sale, together with a copy of the Title to the property, to the Purchaser's solicitor. The Purchaser is only bound to buy the property once he has signed the Contracts for Sale and his solicitor has sent them back to the Vendor's solicitor with the agreed deposit. The Vendor on the other hand is only bound to sell once he has also signed the Contract for Sale and sent the Contract back to the Purchaser's so that both parties then hold a Contract signed by both parties. It is at this stage that the difficulties normally arise because of the fact that if you are buying and selling a property you, as a Purchaser of a new property are taking a big risk if you send back signed Contracts on the house you want to purchase if you do not have signed Contracts from the person who wants to Purchase your property. In order to try to minimise the stress involved at this stage, where buying and selling at the one time, it is a good idea, where possible, to let your solicitor know as soon as you have a sale agreed so that they can send Contracts out right away in an effort to get signed Contracts back from the Purchaser of your sale property ahead of the deadline for signing on the Contracts for the property you are purchasing.

OBTAINING THE MORTGAGE PACK

When purchasing a property I would always advise that you wait until you make sure that you have obtained mortgage approval on the property you are buying before you sign Contracts so that you avoid the risk of binding yourself to buy a house and then not obtaining a mortgage for some reason. To be absolutely sure you should not sign Contracts until your solicitor has the mortgage pack in his hand because there can be occasions when specials conditions can appear on a mortgage offer that may be somewhat different that what you thought had been agreed.

The issue of the mortgage pack appears to be the thing that causes the greatest delay in the signing of contracts and so when planning to purchase I would advise that you put the time into providing all the information required by the branch or your broker and that you continue to follow its progress until your solicitor actually confirms that he has received the mortgage pack. The mortgage institutions requirements are often numerous especially with the 100% mortgages and it is worth keeping in mind that a Vendor normally allows 14 to 21 days for Contracts to be signed by a Purchaser after they have been issued to his solicitor and thereafter you are at the discretion of the Vendor as to how much longer he will give before he puts the property on the market again.

When it comes to actually drawing the loan cheque down from the mortgage institution the life policy is the normally the main offender. It is important that after you have completed the life policy application that you keep an eye on its progress to ensure that it has gone into the mortgage institution. Solicitors do not normally deal with house insurance or life policies so if you tell them that they have been dealt with they will not be any the wiser until they come to drawdown the loan cheque.

I hope that this will be of some help to you when planning your next sale or purchase but if all that I have managed to do is send you into a state of extreme boredom then I can only offer you the following lame joke by way of apology:

Why did the blond stare really hard at the orange juice container ------ because it said concentrate on the side of it.

For further information on any of your property and conveyancing needs, please contact Malcomson Law by calling 01 8744422 or by filling out an Online Enquiry Form.

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