Conveyancing - Buying and Selling Property
Conveyancing in England & Wales is a competitive business - particularly since the introduction of licensed conveyancers - and so it is not especially difficult to find a solicitor (or licensed conveyancer) to carry out any conveyancing work at reasonable cost. The firm acting for you does not have to be local so always ring round and obtain some quotes before committing yourself.
It is not usually advisable to do your own conveyancing both because the cost of a professional doing it is relatively modest and, more importantly, because you will have no-one to sue if you get it wrong. It is much more technical than you might imagine. In any event, if you are borrowing money from a mortgage lender to fund the purchase the lender will not agree to you acting on your own behalf and will insist on legal representation to safeguard its own funds for the reasons just mentioned among others.
Most of the costs involved - Stamp Duty, Land Registry Fees, Local Search Fees etc - are fixed and should not vary from solicitor to solicitor. Each of these so called "disbursements" can easily be verified from the Land Registry or the Local Authority etc. The solicitor's fee will usually be small in relation to some of the other costs such, for instance, as Stamp Duty or the estate agent's commission.
Never enter into a conveyancing transaction without first agreeing the cost. This can sometimes happen almost by accident. For instance, a solicitor may be handling the administration of a deceased person's estate where there is a property to be sold and it may never occur to the executor to agree a specific charge for selling the house. This can be a trap for the unwary. Even in this situation always agree the cost of the sale in advance otherwise you may end up paying a "reasonable cost" which may be uncomfortably high.
Most people tend to think of "conveyancing" as simply the buying and selling of private residential flats or houses and, of course, it does include but is not limited to that. "Conveyancing" is simply a technical word for the mechanisms of transferring property and so a conveyancing solicitor might also help buy commercial properties - offices, shops etc -, draft leases for private or commercial properties and also assist in the legal formalities involved in no end of other buying, selling, transferring or leasing transactions.
Within the context of a divorce or the breakdown of a relationship people often think that their partner cannot claim the house because it is not in joint names. That is not the case - particularly in divorce. Within the context of a divorce a wife, for example, may often successfully make a claim against the matrimonial home even though it is in the sole name of the husband. Whose name is on the title deeds tends to be less important in cases of divorce.
However, in the case of cohabitees whose name is on the title and whether the partners are jointly on the mortgage may be of crucial significance. In the case of cohabitees, whether the property which they occupy is in one partner's sole name or whether it is joint, it is almost always sensible to enter into a written agreement about who is entitled to what when the property is bought or when the partner moves into the property. This avoids any dispute later and it is infinitely easier to get a person to sign an agreement when buying a property or when moving in than it is later when the relationship might have broken down. For cohabitees in particular, such an agreement drafted by a solicitor and properly formalised can avoid costly litigation about the property if the relationship later breaks down.
