Instruct a Solicitor
As there’s enough red tape involved in buying a home to tie a pretty bow around the moon, all three parties – that’s you, the seller and the mortgage lender – will require a solicitor or licensed conveyancer to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s.
Of the three solicitors, you’ll be paying for two of them, as the buyer is also liable for their mortgage lender’s legal fees. However, to cut down costs, your solicitor can sometimes act for both you and your lender, and there are also some mortgage deals that come with the legal fees paid.
To find a solicitor, ask around for a good, word-of-mouth referral, or grab a few names off the Law Society database (select ‘conveyancing residential’ in the ‘area of law’ dropdown), and then ring around for quotes.
The typical cost for legal fees is anything between £500 and £1000, but choose carefully as good solicitors are worth their weight in gold and could shave weeks of the home buying process.
What Does a Solicitor Do?
It’s tempting to give an answer that is wholly inappropriate for this website, but in all seriousness, solicitors perform an important role.
Primarily, your solicitor will act as the intermediary through whom all contracts and transactions will pass, such as the transfer of legal ownership of the property, money transfers and dealing with the seller’s solicitor.
Solicitors also carry out various property-related searches, such as:
- Finding out if there are any subsidence issues
- Researching any planned major developments affecting the property
- Checking the provision of drainage
- Ensuring requisite building consents are in place
Additionally, if the property is leasehold, the solicitor will also engage with the leaseholder, which is likely to add some time and money to the whole process.
What is a Licensed Conveyancer?
The legal process of transferring ownership of a property from one person to another is known as conveyancing. In fact, anyone can carry out the conveyancing, but in practice most people leave it to the professionals because of its complexity.
A licensed conveyancer is someone who has trained and qualified as a specialist in all aspects of the law dealing with property. Their expertise and experience, and your peace of mind, is what you pay for.
HIPs (Home Information Packs)
The Government started introducing HIPs into England and Wales in August 2007 with the intention of making the buying and selling process faster, simpler and easier to understand.
Home Information Packs are provided by the seller and must be made available to potential buyers, free of charge. They contain essential information regarding the property, such as:
- Energy Performance Certificate
- Sale statement
- Standard searches
- Evidence of title
Plus certain additional information if the property is leasehold/commonhold.
In theory, they should reduce your solicitor’s fees because the solicitor shouldn’t have to perform as many searches. In practice, however, it seems that lenders foresee potential problems in allowing the seller to perform the searches themselves and have therefore made it a requirement that a solicitor still makes the requisite checks.
So will HIPs prove effective in their goal of making the buying and selling process faster, simpler, and easier to understand, or will they need replacing (HIP replacement – geddit!)? Only time will tell!
Next - Step 9: Arrange Mortgage
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HIPs - What are they?
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