Disappearing into the abyss, or as it’s more commonly known, conveyancing.
Once a mortgage has been arranged in connection with a purchase, the borrower then has to go through the conveyancing process.
To people involved in the early stages of a transaction – brokers, buyers and sellers this is a big change – up to that point everything was hurry hurry hurry – offers made and refused, counter offers, and so on. Then mortgage applications required proof of income, references etc, and then…
And then nothing – it disappears off to the conveyancers for them to do their thing and it could come out of the other end anywhere from six days to six years later (or so it seems). This guide is intended to shed a bit more light on what happens in the conveyancing process.
A simple overview of a purchase in 5 steps:
1) The conveyancer finds out about the property
2) Once that’s done, the conveyancer advises the buyer whether or not it’s OK to buy, and advises the lender whether or not it’s OK to lend on
3) Assuming it is OK, the conveyancer then commits the buyer to buying the property (by exchanging contracts) and agrees with the sellers conveyancers when they are going to buy it (the completion date)
4) The conveyancer then gets the mortgage monies in from the lender and uses that (along with whatever the buyer is contributing) to buy the property on the completion date.
5) After completion the conveyancer registers the buyer as the new owner and also registers the mortgage on the title deeds
That all sounds relatively simple – in which case why should it often take months for this to happen?
Chains
Because of the English conveyancing system, a chain of transactions needs to exchange on the same day, and complete on the same day. Therefore the chain can only move forward and at the pace of its slowest link.
So if you’ve got a first-time buyer (for example) who only found somewhere to buy five weeks after you started, then you’ve got to wait for them to catch up
Other organisations
The information-gathering part of the whole process can take a while because we are requesting information from a number of different agencies – all of whom work in their own way and at their own pace.
It’s fair to say that the general pace of providing searches has speeded up dramatically in the last decade but it can still cause hold-ups.
Sometimes you’ll be requesting information from third parties – here you could be dealing with someone who’s very efficient and happy to help – but equally you could be dealing with someone who couldn’t care less and doesn’t want to help.
Other people
Along with the chain comes the people involved. Usually in pairs, and all with their own agenda. On the face of it they all want to move house, but in reality they all want to do it at different times and for different reasons.
Some might not want to go ahead until a certain report comes back, some might want to delay it until after the birth of their child or (more commonly) they MUST get in before the birth of their child.
Most people are stressed – they are having to do this stuff in addition to their normal jobs, and tempers can get frayed. This in turn can sometimes lead to one party throwing their toys out of the pram and deciding not to move. This holds up the whole chain until a new buyer is found.
Problems that needs sorting
When the conveyancer checks the property they may find things that are just wrong. For example an extension built without planning consent, or that the deeds show the sellers don’t own all the land they are selling.
When these things are discovered they have to be sorted out. In recent years indemnity policies have been used more often to give insurance against some of these things. However some things can’t be insured against and everyone in the chain will need to wait while it is sorted out
Slow conveyancers
You still get them. In our experience it’s usually firms that dabble in conveyancing (so they aren’t familiar with what needs doing) or those that are too busy that cause the most problems. You can also get firms that seem busy on a file when in actual fact their client has instructed them to go slow.
Can you help with the process?
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. It depends on the reason for the hold-up – if it’s someone not returning a form, then a chase call can help.
If there is a more formal process involved (such as rectifying a fault with some deeds) then sometimes you have to wait until it’s completed. At the end of the day the whole thing is a people process – in spite of all the technology you’re still relying on people doing their bit to help without delay.
