Selling a House or Flat
ARTICLES AND FAQS
Some of the things people ask and problems they have, with our comments and answers.
1. First Thing - Find A Buyer.
Unless you arrange a sale privately through friends or family, without advertising anywhere, you will have to market the property in some way, through local newspaper ads, through internet sales sites such as Houseweb, or through an estate agent. See our site about Choosing an Estate Agent with pages about Selling Privately.
2. Once you have a Buyer...
Instruct us to act...
What follows is the way this firm operates, but most solicitors will follow broadly similar steps. If you are happy to instruct us then you will need to complete any forms we have sent you and usually provide a cheque for initial disbursements.
We will not do any work at all for you until we have been formally instructed and we have carried out the necessary anti-money laundering checks.
if you haven't already done so through an estate agent you will have to arrange an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). If you are close to Southampton then you could try http://www.goeco-energy.co.uk/ for this.
We Get the Deeds...
In order to send out a Draft Contract Package we will need to obtain your Deeds. If the property is not leasehold and is registered, we can often send out paperwork that will enable a buyer's solicitor to get started, without having the deeds pack, but will generally need to see the documents in the pack in order to deal with any queries that may come up.
If you have a mortgage, this will may be held by your lender, and this is much more likely to be the case if you started your mortgage before 2003. Otherwise you, or any previous solicitor who acted for you, may have the "Deeds", or a bundle of documents that the lender did not want but which could actually be quite important, in which case we will need you to let us have them as soon as possible.
Click for a page about the next stage: Selling: 3. Pre-Contract Stage
Copyright: Richard Webster & Co 2010
Richard Webster & Co 30 Leigh Road Eastleigh Hampshire SO50 9DT
Explanation about property selling process from Conveyancing Solicitors for the Southampton area, South Hampshire, and Wiltshire.
Page Last Revised 11/02/11