Buying your house ...
For more information about moving
house, or to request a free written quotation of our charges e-mail
Tracey Hunt at Ripley or
telephone us on 01773 747000.
Please contact us as soon as your
offer to buy has been accepted. We can then give you a full breakdown of costs,
including our own fees.
Searches - and why you need them
We will need to carry out a
'Local Search' with the District or Borough Council, a Chancel Search check and perhaps a Water Services
search and a mining report. The results of these can take three weeks to come
back and we need you to pay the search fees at this stage (we have to send a
cheque when applying for the searches).
The Local Search is an
official form in which the Council discloses any problems, orders or proposals
affecting the property which are known to them (road proposals, public health
issues, improvement grants, tree preservation orders, conservation areas and
even compulsory purchase orders among other things) together with information on
planning permissions, etc. Please let us know if the property has been altered
or extended since it was originally built so we can check it has all the right
permissions and consents.
In a mining area, the Mining
Report is essential to show whether there have been any claims for
subsidence damage, how close to the surface the property has been mined and
whether it is affected by any past and future opencast mining. Your Water
Services Report contains information relating to the route of drains and
sewers and important confirmation whether there are any private drains or septic
tanks which are likely to cause unexpected cost or effort on your part.
"Contaminated" land
This is likely to be a big issue
in the future, and another helpful and increasingly more popular search is the ‘Environmental
Search’, which should show any land contamination, landfill, radon gas and
subsidence, flooding or harmful emissions risks. It will usually also show any
known local industrial use, whether current or in the past. We usually recommend
you obtain this useful search, and at £34.08 (inc. vat) we regard this search as
very good value, and it may save you a good deal of trouble and possibly expense
(particularly when you come to sell the property on). (See
Links for a free
area check based on postcode). It is also now possible to insure the
property you are buying against environmental factors and some companies offer
legal and clean up costs cover of up to £1 million for 25 years for as little as
£25 including tax if taken out when applying for an Environmental Search. Not
everyone will want this sort of cover but it is good to know it is available if
you need the extra reassurance it provides.
Depending on where you are
buying, other searches may be necessary (Radon Gas enquiries, railway searches,
canal searches, Tin Mining searches in Cornwall and Brine extraction searches in
Cheshire, for example) - see
Links for more information on Radon Gas.
Chancel check Search
There has recently been a case
decided by the Courts whereby a Church relied upon a covenant made
in medieval times by the then owner/occupier of a property whereby
the present owner/occupier had to pay a sum of £95,000.00 to a
Church towards its maintenance.
We are therefore offering all
of our Clients, a Chancel Search at a price of £75.00 plus VAT to
ascertain whether or not your property is at risk. If the Search
shows that property is at risk, then we can disclose the result of
the same to your Seller’s Solicitors and request your Seller to pay
Indemnity Insurance against the event that a Church could in the
future request monies to maintain it.
Mortgages
If you need help with choosing a
mortgage lender, we can recommend Independent Financial Advisers who will give
you good, impartial advice*.
If you would rather wait until
you have verbal approval from your lender before applying for searches, please
be sure to let us know as soon as possible to avoid any unnecessary delay once
the go-ahead is given. Please talk to your lender or mortgage adviser at this
stage to make sure you have let them have everything they need to process your
application. Please let us know of any problems with your mortgage as soon as
they arise.
Draft Contract received
The seller's lawyers prepare a
draft Contract from the deeds and send this to us, together with copies of the
most relevant deeds. The Contract sets out what will be the legally
binding agreement between you and your seller and we have to check that it
properly reflects what has been agreed and that the sellers are not imposing any
conditions which prejudice your position. They also let us have the Property
Information Form (a questionnaire about the property) and the Fixtures
and Fittings List. You are entitled to rely upon the seller's replies as
part of the contract. Please particularly check the list of contents the sellers
are taking with them and any plan which they supply.
If the property is Leasehold then
they will also supply a copy of the Lease and proof that the rent and
service charge (if any) is paid up to date together with service charge
accounts. Although these documents are complicated, we will usually let you have
copies of the most important parts so you can refer to them in the future if you
have any differences with your Landlord.
Surveys and valuations
Your lender (if you have one)
will carry out a valuation, but sometimes this information is not made available
to you, and may not be as detailed as you might like. We strongly recommend that
you have a survey carried out by a properly qualified surveyor as this will
alert you to any potential repairs or defects. Once you have bought it is
difficult if not impossible to recover contributions from the Seller. We can
usually recommend a good local surveyor to you. Please contact us when your
mortgage offer is received; if we have had acceptable search results by this
time, we shall then arrange an appointment for you to call in and review all the
paperwork we have.
Signing your Contract
This is the time to discuss when
Completion of the purchase should take place; your sellers may well be
buying on so the date may have to be agreed between several sets of buyers and
sellers. We shall ask you to sign your contract and pay a deposit (usually the
difference between your mortgage cheque and the purchase price, if less than
10%). We can accept personal cheques but these take approximately 4-5 days to
clear so unless it is a problem to you we would usually ask that you pay us your
deposit by Building Society cheque or Banker's draft made out to this firm.
We shall also need to see
confirmation of your identity - passports are best, but if you do not have one
we can let you know what other documents we can accept. The Completion Date
we agree will be made part of the legal agreement and you should be sure that
any date agreed gives you time to do everything necessary, including obtaining
the balance of the money from your bank or building society and giving notice to
your landlord if you are in rented property. You should never give notice
to end your tenancy until contracts have been exchanged.
Exchange of Contracts
On "Exchange of Contracts",
the agreement is made legally binding and your deposit is paid over to the
seller's lawyers. You and your seller are then committed to go ahead. Neither of
you can now pull out without very serious legal and financial consequences.
Pre-Completion
You should talk to your seller to
make arrangements for them moving out and you moving in on the Completion Date.
They have to make a key available either direct or through the Estate Agent for
you to collect by no later than about lunchtime on the Completion Day (the
actual time can vary - it depends what their contract says). Don't
organise your van for first thing in the morning unless special arrangements
have been made, as the money will take a few hours to get through the banking
system and the sellers are unlikely to release the keys until this arrives. This
is particularly important if you have a sale of your own or if you are buying
from a builder. We shall contact you before the completion day to get the final
deeds signed. We will let you have a full Completion Statement which will show
the amount we need from you to complete the purchase, including our fees and
Stamp Duty, if applicable.
Completion and after
You will not need to see us on
the Completion Day, but please let us know if there are any problems. Even if
you are not moving in until after Completion, your seller is obliged to be out
of the property and hand any keys over to you on the Completion Day when we have
paid their lawyers the purchase money. Please let us know if you think the
seller will not actually move out on the completion day.
After completion, we will arrange
for the Stamp Duty to be paid (if the price is over £120,000) and then
arrange for the purchase to be registered at the Land Registry. Depending on
whether the property is already registered at the Land Registry the time this
takes can vary greatly from a few days to several months. When this is done, we
send the deeds off to your lender if you have a mortgage. Otherwise, we can keep
them for you, free of charge.
