Disbursements are cost which are payable as part of a conveyancing transaction via your conveyancer to third parties. These are costs which do not form part of a conveyancer's fees. The following are some of the more common disbursements that you mig...

Completion Day Order of Events The buyer's conveyancer should ensure that he has both the mortgage funds (if a mortgage is required) and funds from his client no later than the working day before completion. This is because the funds will most likely...

The purpose of the pre-completion searches is to prevent entries being registered against the property (or in the case of the bankruptcy search, the purchaser) from exchange of contracts up to the completion of the registration process, so that the b...

What is Exchange of Contracts? This is when the contract becomes legally binding on both buyer and seller (note that merely signing it does not bind either party). It is so called because both buyer and seller sign identical copies of the contract an...

When acting for a purchaser who is buying with a mortgage the conveyancer will, on the vast majority of occasions, also act for the lender. It should be noted that no commercial (as opposed to private) lender will allow the purchaser to carry out his...

The Seller's Property Information Form TA6, often shortened to SPIF is part of the Law Society's National Conveyancing Protocol and should be completed by the seller(s). This chapter will take you through the SPIF produced by the Law Society and dist...

Making the Application for Registration (AP1) What is Registration? Registration is the process by which a land transaction (such as a purchase, remortgage, transfer of equity, deed of gift etc.) is notified to H M Land Registry and by which the regi...

Under the Land Registration Act 2002 (which repealed the Land Registration Act 1925) it is compulsory for all land in England and Wales to be registered with the Land Registry. The trigger for registration is a change of ownership, such as a sale, gi...

What are Requisitions on Title? These are a set of questions, usually in the Law Society's standard Completion Information and Requisitions on Title form designed to ensure that certain key information is obtained prior to completion. They are r...

The leasehold information form (TA7) is one of the standard Law Society protocol forms used in transactions where the property is leasehold. It is completed by the seller in addition to the Property Information Form and asks a serious of questions sp...

In the case of registered land, the land registry's registers contain all the details of the title to a property. An Official Copy of the register is therefore the equivalent of a full set of title deeds (save that a register entry may sometimes refe...

Introduction This chapter explains how to draft the property transfer deed, which is the document which is submitted to HM Land Registry to transfer ownership of the legal title to land. If you are looking to carry out a property transfer yourself th...

Shared ownership is a scheme where a landlord, usually a Housing Association (HA) or other Registered Social Landlord (RSL) will sell a percentage share of a property to a purchaser and retain the remaining share. It is designed to help people get on...

Introduction to the Sale Conveyancing Tutorial What follows in this page is a comprehensive guide to carrying out the conveyancing in the sale of a property. It covers freehold, leasehold, registered and unregistered land. It is separated into sectio...

Guide to Conveyancing on a Purchase This section is a step-by-step guide to carrying out the conveyancing for the purchase of a property. If you are not a solicitor or conveyancer and you are intending on carrying out your own conveyancing you shoul...

The purpose of this chapter is to offer some useful wording for pre-contract enquiries which might need to be raised in respect of some of the more common issues not covered by the Sellers Property Information Form, Sellers Leasehold Information Form...

When buying a property, having a proper survey done should be the top of your list of priorities. After all, you wouldn't buy a car without an MOT certificate and the average house costs perhaps 50 times as much as the average car! It is true that a ...

When moving home, booking your removals shouldn't be an afterthought. You need to plan it because if something goes wrong you could be looking at serious expense and inconvenience on the day of completion. At the start of your conveyancing transacti...

  Stamp Duy Land Tax This article is about Stamp Duty Land Tax which applies to properties in England only. For properties in Wales, the equivalent tax is Land Transaction Tax (LTT). For information on LTT click here. What is Stamp Duty Land ...

The contract, (sometimes referred to as an agreement), is the legal contract between the buyer and seller for the purchase/sale of the property. It contains the terms of the contract, such as the price, the completion date, the amount of deposit paid...

The standard conditions of sale are a set of Law Society produced contract conditions to which the vast majority or residential sale contracts are subject. A solicitor is not obliged to incorporate the standard conditions of sale into any contract he...

What is a rentcharge? A rentcharge, as defined by s1 Rentcharges Act 1977, is “any annual or other periodic sum charged on or issuing out of land, except— (a)rent reserved by a lease or tenancy, or (b)any sum payable by way of interest...

Building Safety Act 2022 The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced a number of new measures in relation to building safety, affecting buildings of 11m (or 5 storeys) and more – now known as “relevant buildings”. The UK Finance Mortga...