Conveyancing - Selling a house

No property is exactly the same. There can be any number of complexities affecting individual properties that will impact how we handle the transaction.

Our fees will reflect the particular requirements of your sale. Please call us so that we can take further details about your intended transaction and provide a full estimate of our legal fees.

We will need to establish if there are any matters which could potentially have an impact on the transaction and any costs estimate.

Factors that could make a transaction more complex include:

Title discrepancies which need to be rectified at the Land Registry
Properties comprising more than one title
Complex and unorthodox rent and covenant provisions in a lease
Dealing with a third party solicitor or agent or other entity regarding matrimonial matters, third party payments or other matters
If the property is a listed building or in a conservation area or otherwise subject to planning requirements and alterations have been carried out
If any adverse entries are revealed in the search results, such as enforcement notices or undischarged planning consents in the local search
If part of the land being purchased/sold is not included within the registered title
Where a right of way or other easement is required for a property but no such rights appear to exist within the legal title

Key stages

The stages set out below are an indication of some of stages which may be addressed in a sale. The stages assume that the other parties will be cooperative and that those requested to undertake certain tasks will do within the time scales asked.

Taking your initial instructions regarding the circumstances of the transaction and providing a quotation.
Opening a file and issuing our engagement pack to you.
Receiving the engagement pack from you together with a payment on account of costs.
Once the Memorandum of Sale is received from the estate agent, we would obtain the title documents from the Land Registry (if available).
Issue the draft contract pack to the purchaser’s solicitor.
Review the title to the property to ascertain whether there are any registered mortgages or other charges. If so, send a letter to the lender to obtain up to date redemption statements.
Once the purchaser’s solicitor has had an opportunity to go through the draft contract pack, they would normally raise any enquiries with us. We would then review these enquiries and either take instructions from you or respond to them if it’s possible to do so.
We would then send the contract and transfer to you for signature. Once we receive the signed documents, we would place these on file in readiness for exchange.
Once all enquiries have been satisfied, all redemption figures received and the signed documents returned, we would then proceed to exchange of contracts. At this point, the completion date would be set.
In between exchange and completion, we obtain accurate redemption statements for any charges on the property and an invoice from the estate agents for any fees due to them.
On the day of completion, we would receive the money from the purchaser’s solicitor and ensure that this is distributed to all connected parties to redeem and accounts due.

How much will conveyancing for my sale cost?

Our fixed fees for a typical sale range from £816.00 (inclusive of VAT) for a simple transaction to around £3,600.00 (inclusive of VAT) for a complex transaction. These figures may vary in cases with special complications. That’s why we will always give you an individual cost estimate at the start of the transaction, taking into account the actual features of your sale or purchase. We will always advise you immediately about any complication and discuss any possible impact on price at that stage. We have several regulatory requirements to verify the identity of our customers and perform due diligence checks which are designed to help prevent fraud and money laundering. We have put in place significant anti-fraud checks to protect our customers and these are charged at £12 (inclusive of VAT) per person. These checks may need to be undertaken more than once during the legal work.

Disbursements

Disbursements are costs related to your matter that are payable to third parties, such as:

Land Registry Office Copy fees to establish ownership of property and any mortgages that may be registered. The cost of the Land Registry official copies will depend on how many registered titles there are for the property. The cost for obtaining title documents from the Land Registry could vary from between £4.00 to in excess of £20.00 (inclusive of VAT) depending on the circumstances.
If we need to send funds to a third party on the day of completion then a CHAPS transfer fee will be payable. The cost for this transfer will be £30.00 (inclusive of VAT).

How long will my matter take?

If your transaction proceeds smoothly then the average timescale to move to completion would be around 8 weeks. However, this can be significantly longer if we encounter delays or complications during the process.

As explained above, this is just an estimate and we will of course be able to give you a more accurate timescale once we have more information and as the matter progresses.

Next steps

Our Residential Conveyancing team are experts in their field and we are proud that our hard work has been recognised and rewarded by successfully winning the ‘Regional Conveyancing Firm of the Year’ award at the Law Firm Services Awards 2018.

Brethertons are on all major mortgage lender panels and were appointed onto the ‘Help to Buy Midlands’ Solicitors Panel and the ‘Orbit, West Midlands Help to Buy’ panel.

If you would like to instruct us, or to learn more about our Residential Conveyancing services, please visit our key contact details. Alternatively, you can email your enquiry to us or visit our Conveyancing pages for further information.

Should you wish to meet our team of experienced and talented staff who would be responsible for progressing your matter then please click here.