Some cash-rich buyers thinking of buying or selling a London property including in the Westminster and Pimlico areas have been considering dispensing with the services of a Solicitor to handle the conveyancing.
If you are a person who is familiar with legal jargon, have plenty of time on your hands and don’t mind ploughing through paperwork and finding the answer to some fairly obscure questions, then you may relish the prospect of doing your own conveyancing.
Incidentally, if you are buying a property with a mortgage the lender will insist you use a professional solicitor to handle the conveyancing.
Some people will tell you that property conveyancing is easily done. All you need is time and a telephone.
So perhaps we should take a look at what a conveyancing solicitor does:
When you are buying a property and instruct a conveyancing solicitor, his or her role is to liaise with the seller’s solicitor and carefully scrutinise all the relevant documents that they receive from the other solicitor.
Also they will apply for local authority searches which will reveal any developments or future plans that may adversely affect the property and its resale value.
Likewise, the water and drainage search should confirm the water authority is responsible for maintaining the sewers and drains connected to the property and the status of any sewers running beneath it. The environmental search will ensure there is no land contamination from earlier use and discover if the land is prone to subsidence, flooding or landslips.
If you are buying a leasehold property such as a flat your solicitor will obtain financial information about how the building is run, how much you will be asked to pay as an annual service charge and what this charge has been in recent years, including plans for future expenditure.
When he has completed his enquiries and is fully satisfied, he will provide you with a comprehensive report of his findings. Should he not be completely happy, he may recommend that you do not proceed to purchase the property.
Your solicitor will present you with a contract of sale/purchase that he has agreed with the seller’s solicitor for you to sign. Once you have signed this and all your finances are in place – including a mortgage in many cases – your solicitor will be able to exchange contracts with the seller’s conveyancer. Once you have exchanged contracts, you are legally committed to buying the property and the seller is legally committed to selling it to you, (unless one or other of you dies before completion of the sale). This is therefore usually a time for celebration and to begin to plan your moving-in. The period of time between exchange and completion can vary from a few weeks to as little as a few days, or occasionally the two can take place simultaneously, with the consent of both parties and their solicitor, of course.
A conscientious solicitor will make sure that moving to your new home will go as smoothly as possible. While you are settling in, they will continue working for you, to tidy up the legal formalities. They will pay the government’s stamp duty to the Inland Revenue on your behalf, and they will make sure your title to the property is registered with the Land Registry Office.
A conveyancing solicitor will have extensive knowledge of property law, and will know exactly what to look for when reviewing the results of his searches.
Hopefully the above paragraphs will have made those people who think conveyancing is a relatively easy thing to do, think again.
Although this article deals with buying a property, similar routines by the solicitor acting for the owner who is selling his property, will apply as well.
An inexperienced lay-person who decides to do their own conveyancing could leave themselves open to making very expensive mistakes, and in some cases, could find themselves at the wrong end of a lawsuit.
So the answer to the question” Do I need a solicitor to handle the conveyancing when buying or selling a home in Central London, including from ANDREW REEVES in Westminster or Pimlico?” is a resounding “Yes”.
