Buying a home is an undeniably exciting thing to be doing.
Whether a first home, a first major step into life with a new partner, or the next step on your journey, moving home is always thrilling – and always, unavoidably, a stressful thing to do too. First-time buyers are more likely than most to find such moves stressful, though, especially so when the legal elements of doing so can appear so confusing. What are these legal elements, and what should you know about them?
Getting a Solicitor
The very first thing you should do with respect to handling the legal aspects of your property-buying endeavour is to hire a solicitor with a specialism in the property. These can go by a number of names, but the most common type of solicitor used in these endeavours is a conveyancer. Conveyancers handle the specifics of the sale, from checking legal documentation to communicating with – and handling funds from – your mortgage provider.
Conveyancers also oversee the examination of the property and its associated documents, in order to identify potential issues, unexpected costs or roadblocks to ownership. Their failure to pick up on something essential, such as an issue with boundaries or a restrictive covenant preventing a renovation plan of yours, can be frustrating at best and legally problematic at worst. Such professional negligence can thankfully be redressed in civil court, but the potential for this should be enough that you choose your conveyancer wisely.
Verifying the Seller
This is an important part of the process and one in which both you personally and your conveyancing solicitor should engage. When purchasing a property, you want to know as much as you can about the seller – if only to verify that they are a legitimate seller, and indeed someone you would be happy to do business with in general.
In a worst-case scenario, the seller could be acting maliciously and not in fact have the authority to sell the property; the outcomes of this could take years to unravel while seeing much of your money locked up or even lost altogether.
Land Permissions
One of the more useful ancillary roles of your conveyancing solicitor is to examine the legality of the land you are buying, from its official boundaries to its status with the Land Registry and beyond. In revisiting these documents and more, the conveyancer can discover the legal condition of the land and any specific restrictions that may be placed on it. For example, some properties may be built across public footpaths, making certain renovations or building projects illegal.
Title Documents
Finally, the title deeds to the property are essential for cross-referencing exactly what it is you are buying. If the contents of these title documents do not match up with Land Registry information or other data, this could be a problem – and you could be entitled to less land than you are paying for.
