sellers guide
INFORMATION
The key to a rapid and trouble free sale is the
earliest supply to your buyers of all the relevant information about
your property. We will ask you to complete Information Forms and
a list of items that you may be taking or leaving. Some of the questions
can be quite daunting but most are straightforward. Answer in as
much detail as you feel appropriate. More information is better
than less. If you feel that there is insufficient space on the pre-printed
forms please write to us separately. Ask us if you are not sure
about anything. The forms are designed to get information from your
own knowledge. We will answer another set of questions when we have
looked at your deeds. We will check your deeds, give copies to your
buyers and draw up the Sale Agreement when we have seen them. If
your deeds are registered (which they will usually be if you live
in an urban area or if you have moved recently) then we will get
copies from the Land Registry very quickly (usually 3 days). If
not, then we will have to wait until we get the originals either
from you if you have no mortgage or, from your lender if you do.
Most lenders send deeds to us in about 10 days.
We will need the originals (or copies if you only
have those) of any documents relating to work done on your property.
These may be Planning Permissions, Building Regulation Consents,
Specifications, Plans or Guarantees. If you have had the work done
please can you give us these as quickly as possible. If the work
was done before you bought let us know and, again, we will check
the deeds to see what papers there are with them.
We will give your Buyers' solicitors a pack which
puts together all of the information about your property and has
with it the Agreement for Sale. That Agreement will be the document
that you will sign and which will commit you to the sale. We will
not give you the Agreement to sign until we know that it has been
agreed with the Buyers' solicitors.
When your Buyers have seen all our papers they
may have some more questions to ask. These may arise from the information
that you have given or from what we have said about your deeds.
We will check everything that is relevant with you. Do not be surprised
if there are some more questions asked when the Valuation or Survey
has been carried out. Often the Valuer or Surveyor may want some
"legal" information checked.
When your Buyers' solicitors are satisfied with
everything they will tell us and approve the form of Agreement for
Sale.
LOCAL AUTHORITY SEARCHES
Searches are questions which are asked of the Local
Authority within whose area your property is situated. They are
a standard list of questions which deal generally only with the
property and not with surrounding land or other buildings. They
will show up Planning Permissions, Road Widening Schemes, Improvement
Grants, Tree Preservation Orders and similar matters which are specific
to your property. Usually they are "clear". Sometimes
they produce information which will lead the Buyers' Solicitors
to ask us questions. We may be able to answer these from the information
that we have with your deeds or we may need to refer the questions
to you. Most local authorities process their searches in about 14
days. They are quite expensive (about £100.00) and have a
limited life (usually 3 months). Because of this the current practice
is for the searches to be carried out by the Buyers' solicitors.
Often the Buyer will not want to pay for the search until he or
she knows that the Valuation or Survey is satisfactory. This is
one of the reasons that can lead to a delay in the sale process.
(The Government have suggested that sellers should be responsible
for carrying out Local Authority Searches, and there is also a suggestion
that the Sellers should arrange for the property Survey. Neither
of these proposals have yet been acted upon but apart from them
the information that we give to your buyers will be in line with
the Government's current recommendations).
MORTGAGES AND SURVEYS
Your Buyers also need to be able to have access
to all the money that they will need. For most people, this involves
partly their own savings and partly money borrowed from the Mortgage
Company. Mortgages are usually easy to arrange and are processed
within 2 to 4 weeks. At the end of the processing period the Buyer
will receive what is known as a "Mortgage Offer". If that
Offer is satisfactory then the Buyer will know that he or she has
the money that is needed. Any Mortgage Company will take up references
on their borrower and will value the property being bought. Arrangements
to make the inspection for the valuation should be notified to you
within a maximum of 21 days of your accepting your Buyers offer.
If you have not heard by then please tell your Estate Agents and
let us know.
Your Buyers may also have your property surveyed.
This may be done by the same person and at the same time as the
lender's valuation or it may be quite separate and possibly later.
The lender's inspection for their valuation will not take long,
probably less than 30 minutes. The Survey will be much longer -
up to half a day or even more for an older or larger property.
MOVING DATES
While you are selling you will want to know as
soon as possible what dates will be agreed for the move. It is the
Buyers' ability to proceed that will govern the speed with which
the move can take place. The Buyer will need to have his or her
Mortgage Offer (if one is required), a satisfactory Local Authority
Search, a satisfactory Survey and to have agreed all of the information
that has been given to them and the Agreement for Sale. If you are
just selling and the Buyer is just buying, then a date can be agreed
very quickly. Difficulties may occur where either you or your buyer
or both of you are involved in a "chain". This does tend
to happen more often than not. If there is a chain then each person
in the chain also has to be ready before you can make your own arrangements.
We will give you as much information as we can about the chain.
Your Agents will also want to know about this and will make their
own enquiries on it.
EXCHANGING CONTRACTS
The term "exchange of Contracts" describes
the moment in time when the Agreement for Sale is entered into with
your Buyer and becomes legally binding. The Agreement is in two
parts, both identical, one part signed by the Seller and one part
by the Buyer. The exchange takes place when both parts which have
been signed are exchanged between the respective solicitors. The
actual commitment to the sale and purchase takes place usually over
the telephone by agreement between the solicitors but is followed
immediately by the physical exchange of the documents by post or
courier. At the moment of exchange over the telephone the sale is
certain, you are legally bound to complete and the moving date is
fixed. Once this has happened you can confirm all your moving arrangements,
and tell the service companies, local authorities etc. If you have
a mortgage we will obtain a settlement figure from your Mortgage
Company actually made up to the date of legal completion. Once Contracts
have exchanged but not before you should stop your existing mortgage
payments to your mortgage lender. If you are paying by standing
order or direct debit you must tell your bank to stop those. It
is very important otherwise the mortgage lender may go on taking
payments from you even after you have moved! When we have the final
settlement figure on your mortgage we can calculate the balance
that will be due to you and let you have a full financial statement.
COMPLETION
This is the day on which you actually have to give
vacant possession of the property and on which you will move. You
should make sure that all the keys to your property are available.
It is usually best to leave most of these in a safe place, tell
your Buyers where they are and leave the front door key (and any
alarm keys) with the selling Agents. As soon as completion has taken
place we will call the Agents to release the keys. The latest time
by which you should be clear of the property will have been confirmed
when you exchange but is usually either 1.00 or 2.00pm. If you are
just selling we will ask you to give us your forwarding address
and also to let us know how you would like us to send you the balance
of sale money. We can send you a cheque or you can collect one from
us or, we can transfer cleared funds to your bank or building society
account through the "CHAPS" banking system (there is a
bank charge currently £30.00 (inclusive of VAT) to do this).
At completion we will pay off your mortgage and
get a receipt for it from your lender. That receipt will be sent
on to your Buyers' Solicitors. We will send you back any relevant
papers such as insurance policies. This will complete the legal
work that we have had to do for you and we will then close our file.
We will then arrange for it to be microfilmed and we will store
the microfilm for at least 12 years. After microfilming the original
papers will be destroyed. We will not make any charge for retrieving
or printing microfilmed papers in response to any continuing or
new instructions from you.
POINTS TO NOTE
- Once an offer to buy a property has been accepted by the Seller
the Estate Agents will usually circulate details to the Buyers,
to the Sellers and to their solicitors at the same time. Those
details are usually in the form of a "Memorandum" which
set out the names, contact addresses and possibly the telephone
numbers of all parties involved.
- The Sellers' solicitors send out a pack of information about
the property they are dealing with. The information covers a range
of points, some of which are technical and some of which relate
to practical matters such as boundary ownership, list of contents.
It should not take more than 14 days to get all of this information.
- Any mortgage application will need to be processed by the lender.
In our experience this will take 2 to 4 weeks.
- It is very important that a Buyer is completely satisfied with
the structural condition of the property being bought. Once Contracts
are entered into if any faults are found it will be too late to
change the price or withdraw from the purchase. The Seller of
a property is not usually under a duty to disclose faults but
must not hide anything that is wrong.
- As soon as the mortgage offer has been obtained and all the
information agreed the Contracts can be entered into. They are
then "exchanged". That will only happen where there
is a chain, when everybody is ready to go.
- When Contracts have been "exchanged" the date for
completion when the move will take place is fixed.
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