Conveyancing Advice for Home Owners

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In this day and age, we all have to be financially disciplined and prudent. It is important to stay in control of your money and to put yourself in a position of strength, not weakness.

Your home is tremendously important and often property is the biggest asset you’ll ever own. It is somewhere that you can be yourself, relax, spend time with friends, family and loved ones, somewhere that you can shape and mould as you wish and somewhere that has a considerable amount of value, both financially and emotionally.

However, to get your dream home you may have to enter into the dark and dingy forest of property law. Property law can be incredibly confusing and is a system that sometimes feels as if it was specially designed to make your head spin.

One of the most confusing aspects of property law is conveyancing which is the transfer of the legal title of a property from one person to another. The process is split into three stages: before contract, before completion and after completion.

Sadly, that is as simple as it gets. Explaining the finer details would require a fantastic attention span and a particularly well suited mind, as well as years of training and education.  Understandably, most people do not have a particularly good understanding of conveyancing and even conveyancing fees can be complicated.

This is why you need to follow this conveyancing advice:

Always contact the professionals

With anything as complicated as conveyancing, acting alone could result in errors and delays. Luckily, legal advisors such as those at the Co-Operative understand conveyancing fees and the finer points of conveyancing. These advisors are able to point you towards one of their approved firms who can handle your affairs so that you don’t get lost in the technicalities of the process.

Know when it is legal

While advisors or solicitors can handle most of the process for you, it is important that you understand some of the basics – such as when your agreement is legally binding. This occurs once both the buyer and seller have signed the contract. After this point, neither party can withdraw from the agreement without compensating the other.

Know what is included

Naturally, you need to make sure you’re happy with the contract before you sign it. To do this, you need to read it thoroughly and know what is included – something conveyancing solicitors can help with.

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For a general understanding, your contract should cover basics such as the sale price, property boundaries, any legal or planning restrictions, proposed completion date of sale, what services are connected to the property and what fixtures or fittings are being left/included. If your contract is missing any of these details then it’s important you consider having it revised professionally.