So, how does the conveyancing process begin? Once a buyer has found a property to purchase, or in the case of the seller has accepted an offer on a property, they contact a solicitor to instruct them to move the process to the next stage.Once the buyers and sellers have instructed solicitors, the estate agent will issue a sales memorandum to all parties involved, so that the conveyancing process can begin.One of the big concerns at the moment is money laundering, so solicitors have a responsibility to protect against fraud when they start the process with your clients, don’t they?Yes, to protect against fraud, one of the first things we need to do is obtain ID for each person that’s involved in the matter that we’re instructed on, so we can verify their identity. For a buyer we must also obtain information with regards to their savings, their mortgage etc .and how the money is being obtained for their purchase.And that’s simply to check if, for example, if they are buying the property in cash or don’t have a mortgage, the money used to fund the purchase has not been obtained through criminal activities?Absolutely, and to check that the money is indeed their funds and that there is no third party involved, to ensure we are complying with the Anti Money Laundry Regulations.Right, so once that is done, I’m guessing you move on to the meatier paperwork?If we are acting for the seller, they need to complete what we call the protocol forms, such as a Property Information and Form and Fittings & Contents form. They then need to return them to us together with any relevant paperwork that relates to the property, so for example, Fensa certificates for windows, planning and building regulation documents etc. We normally ask for as much information as the client has, so we can it put together with the property information form.And that will save time, the more information you get upfront?Yes, the more information we get at the start, normally the fewer enquiries will be raised during the process later on, so we tend to ask our seller clients to provide us with everything they have, so that way we know from looking at the paperwork what is needed, and which documents are required.If a seller has a pack of information from when they purchased a property that’s always useful as it will have information from their previous sellers, and maybe more details of any works undertaken prior to their ownership.The seller has to be very careful when completing those forms, don’t they? There was recently a well-publicised case when a seller ticked ‘No’ to a question about whether Japanese Knotweed was present on their property, but it turns out there was, and it ended up costing the seller £200,000 to compensate the person who had purchased their property. So, when you fill in these forms it’s important to do it honestly and accurately.It is difficult, because some sellers don’t always know the answers to some of the questions but it’s very important that they are completed to the best of their knowledge/ ability because once it gets close to the exchange of contracts, the details and information provided in these forms are relied on by the buyers and their solicitors to be accurate and to be correct.So once that paperwork is complete and people have provided all of the supporting documentation required such as guarantees, building permissions, and have said if they are leaving anything behind that will be included in the sale, the next stage is presumably to move on to drafting of contracts?Yes, most properties today are registered at the Land Registry, so the Title documents are downloadable from their portal. Once we have these title documents, we can then prepare the contract, and send that together with the deeds and seller’s protocol forms and relevant information to the buyer’s solicitors.And then if you are acting for a buyer, you need to scrutinise this information?Yes, once we have received the draft contract papers from the seller’s solicitors, the first thing we tend to do is check the title plan and order the necessary searches that relate to it. So, it is always important to check the title plan to ensure that there is no missing land, because some properties may have two titles relating to that property, to make sure that when we apply for the searches, we are covering the full extent of the land.We try to do the searches quite quickly because some Local Authority searches can take a couple of weeks to come back. Whilst we wait for those, we will review the draft contract pack, look at the title, protocol forms and documents provided by the seller’s solicitors.When the searches come back, we will also review those and raise any necessary enquiries for information that we may need clarity on or if there are missing documents so that we can give a full picture to the buyer when we present our report to them.About searches – what exactly are they?There are three main searches...
