Selling - Exchange of Contracts Stage

Signing the Contract

We will have sent you the contract to sign (if you were also buying this would have been with the Pre-Contract Report).   Merely signing the contract does not legally commit you, but you cannot be committed to buy UNLESS you have signed the contract.

Deposit

We will normally require a Deposit from your buyer, which is traditionally 10% of the purchase price, although these days for various reasons the amount is often less.   If you are selling and buying we may be able to use your buyer' s deposit to fund the deposit on your purchase.   There is more explanation about deposits generally on the page about Deposits when Selling and Buying Property.

Completion Date

Please also let us know when you would like to complete.   It must be a day between Monday and Friday and not a Bank Holiday.   Any such date has to be agreed with your buyer and with the parties in any chain below.  If you are also buying then any your seller and any chain above them will also have to be consulted.

Sometimes Assumptions have been made by others as to their or other people's ability to proceed and a date you might think has been agreed by all turns out not to be possible.  Therefore we will contact your buyer's solicitors to check agreement about proposed completion dates.

Generally, if the buyers are getting a mortgage their solicitors will need 5-8 working days between exchange and completion to obtain the mortgage funds from the lender.  They have to send a Certificate of Title to the lender to request the funds, and there is often some administrative process carried out by the lender once they receive this, and before the funds can released.  Sometimes we can the funds can be obtained more quickly but this can never be guaranteed.

If you are not buying anything then you will not normally need to be available on the day of completion provided that the property has been emptied and the keys handed to estate agents beforehand and all necessary documents have been signed in advance.

The Actual Exchange

Once all the completion dates are agreed up and down any chain and we have a signed contract  when the buyer's solicitors telephone us we can seek to agree the exchange with them.   If you have a related purchase we will then phone your seller's solicitors to do the same and eventually if exchange is agreed at the "top" of the chain then telephone calls will come back down the chain eventually to us.   If you are not buying then we can exchange with the buyer's solicitors as soon as all the details are agreed. There are prescribed procedures and professional undertakings involved.  The solicitors agree to send each other the contract signed by their respective clients and you are committed from that point.

Sometimes there is a delay in exchanging and there is a page on this here. It is worth looking at so you know what might happen!

When the contracts do get exchanged, you are legally committed to complete the sale (and the Buyer is legally committed to complete the purchase).   Occasionally, this doesn't happen and you must remember that until it does, there is no legal commitment - so if you incur some financial commitment before we have confirmed exchange has happened, you do so at your own risk.

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