Among the different parts of the process that prospective home buyers need to be familiar with, choosing a conveyancing solicitor often stands out above all else.
On top of the fact that such professionals are critical for the overall smoothness of a transaction, the fact that the UK’s standards for legal compliance have grown more rigorous over the years makes it all the more serious. Nowadays, in fact, conveyancing solicitors have become far more of absolute necessities contrary to the older days where they were a baseline luxury or extra source of confidence in a transaction.
As the range of different solicitors available in the United Kingdom continues to grow, choosing the right service provider to work with continues to become a bit more difficult task. Fortunately, it is in situations like these where keeping the right points in mind can easily make a world of difference in the overall experience that you have during your real estate transaction.
If you’re on the verge of closing a property or selling your home and need to enlist the services of a conveyancing solicitor, then here’s everything you should know about choosing the right one:
First things first: who does your conveyancing?
Generally, the conveyancing process is carried out by a specially-trained professional that has the power and necessary training to assist in such complicated and detail-filled matters.
In terms of knowing who is capable of performing the process in question, it’s worth noting that such responsibilities can only be left in the hands of a solicitor, property lawyer, or licensed conveyancer. It is worth noting, however, that specialisations are especially vital when it comes to working on your needs, as some professionals fare better with particular concerns than others.
Apart from considering your own standards and that of the government’s, qualified conveyancers can only be deemed as such if they are approved by your mortgage lender! Should your chosen service provider not be approved by a lender of your choosing, then you’ll need to either pay an additional fee or find a different service provider altogether.
What do they do?
To best understand what these professionals do and what hiring them means for your real estate transaction experience, let’s go over the different responsibilities that they will need to fulfil:
Property inspections and records checks
Conveyancing solicitors or conveyancers, above all else, will focus on conducting vital searches for pieces of information that will confirm the legitimacy of your chosen listing and certify the legality of your transaction.
Throughout the process in question, a specialist will tap into different suppositories for valuable information and confer with relevant organisations that can shed more light on the overall status of the property. With the help of relevant firms like local authorities, homeowners associations, and utility companies, a conveyancing solicitor will help fill you in on all that there is to know and make it much easier to comply with due processes.
Whenever a professional gets to do what they’re hired for, they get to uncover or clarify various concerns—such as:
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The presence of nearby building plans that may put your health and/or safety at risk (such as prisons, sewers, or dams)
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The overall status of the property in the eyes of utility companies that have had it in their records (which also clears up if there are additional dues that need to be accounted for or not)
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The presence of potential natural concerns, such as flood, fire, or earthquake risks
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The need to pay for incurred costs (ex. Stamp duty, unpaid balances, record corrections)
Administrative matters
After all possible risks and pertinent records are properly assessed and accounted for, a skilled solicitor will help ensure that everything checks out on the legal and documentary side of things.
Often beginning with a thorough inspection of the different contracts that you will be required to sign, the administrative side of the process will ensure that nothing is held against you, among other things. With these inspections, dependable service providers will go over the documentation drafted up by a seller’s solicitor or conveyancer (which encompasses details like sale prices and property boundaries).
Apart from checking contracts, dependable conveyancing solicitors will help take care of different matters on your end, such as:
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Liaising with a mortgage lender to help you transition to the next steps of the home buying process in a much smoother manner
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Paying on your behalf when settling specific fees concerning the title transfer process and purchasing period
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Registering you as the new owner of the property at the Land Registry Office
Some Considerations When Choosing a Conveyancer
As the conveyancing industry proves itself to be a more lucrative one with each passing year, hundreds of new professionals come in with the hopes of trying their hand at the field to earn a living and find their purpose. While having more service providers to choose from is great, this also means that finding a solicitor to work with will feel more like finding a needle in a haystack than putting blocks in same-shaped holes.
Fortunately, there’s no need to worry about setting yourself up for a whole lot of unwanted difficulty. Here’s a quick list of different considerations that you’ll need to make to ensure a smooth process:
Consideration #1: Fees
Like any service provider, conveyancing solicitors will charge specific fees that correspond to various facets of their expertise, such as experience, satisfaction rates, and training.
No matter how much you’d like to keep your budget as flexible as possible, the chances are that you have that one specific point in your mind that you would like to stick to (or go below, if possible). Taking this into account, it is best that you set a specific budget and then search for a service provider based on what you’re willing to pay to easily narrow your options.
If you still have no idea of what you should expect when it comes to paying for a conveyancing solicitor’s services, feel free to use our online conveyancing calculator today so that your expectations are set in the right direction!
Consideration #2: Recommendations and reviews
When it comes to choosing the best conveyancing solicitor out of your list of available options, the internet is undoubtedly your best resource to consult with. There are many different review platforms you can find online—all of which can provide a deeper insight into the nature of the people you’re planning on working with.
If you have a pool of different service providers to choose from, it would be best to search reviews from past customers for each of them so that you can get a better idea of what to expect. Thankfully, most reviews online are unfiltered and don’t beat around the bush—which means that what you hear or read about a service provider will reflect the experience that you will have when working with them yourself!
Conclusion
Finding a conveyancing solicitor to work with easily proves to be a rather complicated process because of the array of available options and the heightened standard that government entities are setting for results. Thankfully, keeping this guide in mind and taking all the key pointers mentioned above into consideration will go a long way towards ensuring that you have the best experience possible from here on out!
Are you looking to streamline your home buying or selling process and reduce taking any unnecessary risks along the way? Our conveyancing fees calculator can provide you with the best and most accurate conveyancing results from our team of fully-regulated and trained professionals. Get in touch with us today to find out more!
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