When we bought our house (no mortgage companies or estate agents involved) it took about 6 weeks, including us getting a proper survey done (well a standard house buyers one where the surveyor covers their bum by telling you all sorts of things that could be wrong but aren't).
Should only take a month at most. N.B. we both used small time, small town solicitors (ours is a one man band) and they seem to be more efficient as getting a couple of hundred into their account quickly is good business for them but the big firms you can just get lost in the system.
Yes it is sort of insurance but also saves hassle as all you have to do is fill out a few simple forms for the solicitor (and they tell you if you've accidentally spelt the streetname wrong or whatever) and go into their office to show ID and sign things in front of them and not have to worry about which t you have left uncrossed and whether you should have filled out addendum 3 of form fj65 or whatever it is.
Not meaning to jump on the ‘get a solicitor’ bandwagon but have you considered your/your wife’s capacity to sell a flat that doesn’t ‘belong’ to you (your wife may be the beneficiary of the estate of which the property is part, but that does not give her the right to deal with the legal estate)?
Have you gained a grant of probate, considered the appropriate contract provisions and more importantly, the provisions to be inserted into the transfer to pass the said legal title? Perhaps the appointment of a second trustee to overreach any other equitable interests? The Land Registry are very particular about such things and you may find yourself accidentally in breach of whatever contract you download from the internets.
If you want any specific advice, feel free to inbox
Some pretty good internet advice here on the various bits that form part of the leasehold pack you need to provide also. Note the caveat that as seller you *have* to disclose various bits of information whether the buyer asks for them or not. Get it wrong and you could be sued:
https://www.samconveyancing.co.uk/news/conveyancing/ta7-leasehold-information-form-explained-2532
https://www.samconveyancing.co.uk/news/conveyancing/leasehold-information-pack-3094
Note this is not advice, I am not a a lawyer, I have no affiliation with the site linked to etc etc 🙂
First off I was thinking yesterday how this thread looks like a classic "I am asking for feedback but I am going to ignore any feedback I don't like" internet hissyfit 🙂 The main reason for that is that it's not been my decision and I've been relaying the position as it changes... the decision wasn't made before creating the thread but the position solified quite rapidly thereafter...
@Cougar: I agree asking for unknown unknowns is a problem, but I do think there's an element of solicitor-led stoking of fears about the mysterious hazards in the property world... hence asking for real-life examples. Such conveyancers we have talked to have only offered the full package or not at all, unfortunately.
@dannybgoode: Re. the TA7 and LPE1 and leasehold information pack - the details are either being provided or the buyer already has them due to being an existing owner in the block - there's a checklist of supporting documents the buyer and my wife have been working through, but he already has the bulk of the information that would be in the pack.
The escrow thing is a good one, I agree - the solution again is provided by the buyer being co-operative - he has agreed to pay a deposit, get sight of the forms to view for errors etc., and will transfer the money before we hand over the final signature and keys - there's a sort of physical escrow of the keys in a coded lockbox, and the code will be provided on satisfactory confirmation of the payment.
Funnily enough the 'I won't crash' analogy came up in an argument about this whole thing between me and my wife, when I was raising the various concerns about e.g. money laundering - except in the other direction that if I was so concerned about risk, I should be forbidding her from driving up the M5 to the flat to hand it over... in that case my counter-argument was that those driving risks were known and accepted. But it's quite true that she could die driving over to the contract exchange but that risk is OK... not sure what conclusion I can draw from that!
@slowol: I agree it *should* only take a month but at present there is a logjam of house sales going on due to the stamp duty holiday - sure, the deadline was extended but there are still way more sales than usual in process. One conveyancer we tried repeatedly to get a call back from eventually emailed to say they weren't taking on any more work for the foreseeable months due to this. Another interesting piece of advice was that the actual form filling is approximately as complicated as a passport & visa application and we've successfully navigated the process for US visas in the past. In comparison to that, the solicitor who was involved with the initial process of handling the Will was so inept she hadn't noticed all sorts of errors (wrong surnames, wrong addresses, earlier version of the will had no executors - fortunately the later one did) so paying them to spot errors for us was not appealing.
@noone: Probate was granted some weeks ago (surprisingly quickly, as it happened) and my wife is executor, with the other sibling beneficiaries happily leaving it all up to her - they will not be sticking any oars in. I will inbox you though just to clarify what you mean about provisions to be inserted...
Such conveyancers we have talked to have only offered the full package or not at all
That was one of the reasons I did my own conveyancing to start with. Buying a property at auction you get a full legal pack, all the searches etc. You also have to pay for it if you win the auction. The conveyancers I spoke to still wanted to charge full whack so effectively paying for it twice. The real kick in the nuts being there was absolutely nothing of use or interest in the searches as it was just an empty building with no services.
