A sale of your dwelling will involve transferring its ownership to somebody else, paying off any mortgage and other linked expenses and giving you the proceeds of the sale. Each sale is different but the main steps are:-
- Taking your instructions and talking to you about such aspects as taxation, timescales etc.
- Obtaining the title documents, guarantees, planning permissions and the like, as well as dealing with the completion of the standard information provided on a sale
- Drafting the Contract
- Sending out the Contract papers to the buyer’s lawyer
- Answering any questions they may have about the property
- Agreeing the contract, seeing to its signature and exchanging contracts
- Gathering together financial information about the sale including the sum to pay off any mortgage and agreeing a financial statement with you
- Agreeing a Transfer document and arranging for its signature
- Completing the sale, paying off any mortgage and distributing the proceeds.
Inevitably this is a simplification and there will be many other tasks. For example, if the property is leasehold we will need to obtain an information pack from the Landlord and deal with rent and service charge apportionments.
Looking at timescale, we have in this firm had transactions ranging from 2 hours from start to finish right up to over a year. Many factors will dictate speed including the chain of buyers and sellers. Six weeks to exchange and two weeks between exchange and completion could be taken as an average, but again may be misleading. The shorter the chain of buyers and sellers, the shorter the transaction is likely to take.
