Conveyancing

What does a conveyancer do?

Conveyancing is the legal process that covers the purchase or sale of a property. Your conveyancer will take the process from an accepted offer, through to exchange of contracts and completion. Although largely an administrative process, it is a highly specialist field and requires someone with very particular attention to detail, considerable problem solving skills and an up to date knowledge of the legislation. Many people have approached us over the years whose sale or purchase has failed, not because both parties were not committed but, because of inefficient conveyancing.

What is Sandersons’ involvement in the process?

We devote huge resources to driving the conveyancing process forward with a team of highly experienced progressors. Once a sale is in progress we are completely committed to ensuring that it exchanges and completes in a timely manner. There are very few sales that do not have some sort of chain involved and your solicitor or conveyancer will tend to only deal with you and the other side’s representative. We, as your agent will try and manage the whole chain. We have, on many occasions, kept a sale on track by solving a problem for a vendor or purchaser many times removed from the direct transaction we are managing.

Who should I instruct?

We work with a number of specialist, independent solicitors and conveyancers who are as committed to ensuring your sale goes through as smoothly as we are. Our preference is for you to select someone from our panel as we know that they will communicate with us and let us know if they hit up against any problems. We can then talk to other parties in the chain to try and resolve the issue and, hopefully, move the sale along. In the event a solicitor will not communicate with us our ability to progress the sale is greatly reduced.

How long does it take?

The average sale takes 3 months to exchange and complete but that can be reduced or extended depending on multiple variables. Before we put an offer forward we will establish, as best we can, exactly how many other people are potentially involved in the sale. Clearly, the more parties involved in the chain the more potential there is for unforeseen complications. We are however dependent on the updates and information from other agents in the chain, not all of them will have a dedicated progression team like we do. Chains typically cause delays so sometimes it may be better to consider a slightly lower offer for a chain free or more proceedable buyer than one carrying the risk someone else in the chain could pull out. 

Some of the larger call centre based solicitors tend to be less accountable, harder to reach and less communicative. Appointing a local, more accessible soicitor will overcome many of these issues and shorten the process. 

We have also presided over sales with a quick exchange but an extended completion date agreed.  This can take the stress out of a sale and, if mutually agreed, works well for both seller and purchaser. It has the benefit of giving both parties the security of knowing the sale has been secured without the time pressure.

How much does it cost?

If you use one of our solicitors or conveyancers, they will provide you with a fixed quote that will stand whether unforeseen issues arise or not. We believe, for our buyers and sellers, this is critical. We have seen instances where parties have committed based on a perceived lower fee but then charged many hundreds of pounds more than they budgeted for extras because they did not secure a fixed fee agreement.