What Conveyancers Can Do to Speed Up a Home Sale

What Conveyancers Can Do to Speed Up a Home Sale: The buying and selling of a property can be a very time-intensive process.

It requires cooperation between the buyer and the seller and steady dialogue between solicitors on both sides.

Research compiled by The Advisory found that a panel of professional house sellers, market analysts and industry experts believe that solicitors and estate agents are amongst the factors that most impact the length it takes for a house sale to complete – behind only the asking price and market heat.

Delays and repeated dealings with conveyancers and estate agents can be one of the biggest frustrations to the buyer and seller, but there are many things that you can do as a conveyancer to speed up the process, keep your clients happy and leave them happy to recommend your services to others.

A key issue affecting many transactions is the lack of information being provided upfront which creates delays once sales have been agreed.

To an estate agent or the client, it can seem that it’s easy to provide details at a later date, but due to the workload of many conveyancers, it can take a long time for them to action even the simplest request.

At Ramsdens Solicitors, we work closely with estate agents to alleviate these deals by helping clients to get “contract-ready“ when putting their properties on the market with agents that we work with.

This entails:

1. Obtaining and checking ID documents for all registered owners of the property and attempting to deal with any issues arising from ownership, for example, if a property is being sold via probate or a power of attorney, letting the clients know that we will need to obtain copies of the relevant documents in advance.

2. Obtaining a copy of the title from HM Land Registry and checking for any issues that might delay the time it takes to complete the transaction. These checks include reviewing the length of a lease or any discrepancies in ownership.

3. Asking clients to complete as much of the property information forms as they can ahead of a sale being agreed.

The seller’s property information form (SPIF) is a 16-page document with sections covering simple details such as the contact details for the seller and their solicitors to more complicated and harder-to-source information such as environmental risks to the property, details of electrical work that has been carried out and associated safety certificates, as well as any formal or informal arrangements they have in place, for example, a neighbour parking on the property.

Due to the detail required for this document, it’s important that the seller completes the form as soon as possible.

4. Requesting any additional ancillary documents and information from the clients ahead of time. Many homeowners will need time to find items such as the property deeds when requested so by asking for all of the required documents to confirm the home sale before the final sale is agreed, a lot of time can be saved in the conveyancing process.

Working closely with the selling agent to gather the necessary information from all parties puts us in a better position to issue a full and comprehensive contract pack to the buyer’s conveyancers.

By following these steps at the point when a sale is agreed, we are able to save time for all parties involved and ensure a quick and pain-free property sale.

Written by Tom Bridge, Head of Conveyancing at Ramsdens Solicitors.

Kindly shared by Ramsdens Solicitors