When you’re selling your home it’s important to have all the legal and financial elements in place early so you can get on with your move.  

Finding your conveyancing solicitor early when you’re selling your house is a good idea, as you can work out your conveyancing solicitor fees at the outset. 

Our experienced and trusted residential conveyancing solicitors have dealt with the legal side of house selling many times since we opened our Ilford office, and we’re happy to help you too.

Our fixed-fee conveyancing solicitor fees for selling your home helps you budget

Just fill in this form so we can contact you about the solicitor costs for selling:

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We’ll contact you to send you your free costs quotation within 2 working days.

Questions people ask about conveyancing:

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property, and it happens whenever UK property is bought, sold or remortgaged.

The conveyancing process for each transaction is different, and generally involves liaising between buyers, sellers, mortgage companies, local councils and the Land Registry.

If you are buying property:

We contact the seller’s solicitors to check the title deeds and contract, then conduct a variety of searches depending on the location, check the formal mortgage offer, collect together documents that require signing, organise the handing over the deposit, ensure all monies are in the right accounts, arrange completion of sale, ensure the correct stamp duty is paid, instruct the land registry of the change in ownership, then send the deeds to either the buyer or the mortgage lender.

If you are selling property:

We obtain the title deeds and up-to-date information from the Land Registry, arrange the contracts that outline the sale, liaise with the buyer’s solicitors, find out the balance on your mortgage if necessary, send deeds for signing, arrange for estate agents’ fees to be paid, collect all funds due to the seller, submit statements and send dees and keys to the new owner.

If you are remortgaging:

We obtain the title deeds and up-to-date title copy from Land Registry, deal with any searches, receive mortgage offer, ask you to sign mortgage deed, arrange for the delivery of the new loan, get up-to-date statement from current lender, run searches at the Land Registry, receive the loan and repay existing mortgage, and register the new mortgage with the Land Registry.

In brief, conveyancing has a number of stages and differs according to the purpose of the transaction, the finances of the buyer/seller/remortgager, the geographical location of the property, and the number of other transactions in the chain.

Talk to your conveyancing solicitor throughout the process and they’ll keep you up to date with this important process.

When you use a solicitor for conveyancing you can be sure that they are regulated by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), a member of the Law Society, have degree-level qualifications and at least two years on the job training before qualifying as a conveyancing solicitor.

Whereas a conveyancer tends to be regulated by the Council for Licenced Conveyancers (CLC) and is usually less highly qualified, although can still be perfectly competent.

The standard searches your conveyancing solicitor undertakes are:
– local authority,
– water/drainage, and
– environmental.

There are a number of other searches to undertake depending on the locality of the property. For example, in mining areas a mining search is also always obtained. There may also searches for Gypsum in areas where gypsum mining has taken place, Lead Mining, China Clay, and Limestone.

Check with your property solicitor to find out which searches they are intending to undertake.

We do not generally recommended using an online conveyancer; though you often pay a lower fee, the level of service will also be lower.

You will rarely speak to the same person twice, and you have to be wary of the extras they add on.

When you are dealing with something as valuable as your home, it is important not to take risks. And the potential small savings to be made by using online conveyancing don’t add up – yet. You should meet the solicitor who is working on your case face-to-face.

With such large amounts of money changing hands, there can be attempts to steal them in transit. It is easy to avoid fraud if you follow simple rules:

1 Never ever disclose bank account details by email.

2 Never pay money into an account whose details you have received by email.

3 Both you and your solicitor should pay into accounts whose details you have received by phone or in person.

4 Ideally, test the veracity of bank account details by making an initial payment of £1 – which you then verify by telephoning your conveyancing solicitor – before paying any more.

As most home moves depend on a number of different factors, it is impossible to predict how long your conveyancing will take. However, on average the process will usually take about 8 weeks for a freehold property, and slightly longer for a leasehold.

But as there can be a number of transactions going on at the same time, usually with a chain of strangers all buying and selling their homes and getting mortgages in place – the process rarely depends on just one person.

That’s why moving home is a great time to practice calm and patience, as it is out of your control.

Tom Dyckhoff wrote about Ilford in his Let’s Move To … column in The Guardian in 2017:

“

Let’s move to Ilford, East London: ‘One of today’s boomtowns’

As inner London becomes supergentrified, it’s suburbs such as this that are left for the likes of you and me

What’s going for it? Ilford’s attraction is not immediate. I rise past it most weeks on the North Circular; you might be in any outer London suburb, Kingston or Kingsbury, Bromley or Barnet. If you squint hard (health and safety warning: not when you’re driving), you could even be in Los Angeles. Maybe. Look, Ilford has its moments. Indeed, as central London becomes supergentrified with artisan chocolate boutiques, suburbs such as Ilford are left for the likes of you and me, with the cosmopolitan diversity we once used to seek in the hubbub of the city. These are today’s boomtowns, filled with young professionals, here not least because of Crossrail – aka the Elizabeth line. Sure, Ilford is fat on chainstores, but look past TK Maxx and Wilko and you’ll find wonderful green pockets such as Valentines Park, ace south Asian grocers and Turkish grills, and ooh, a Percy Ingle. A Percy Ingle always makes a good place great.

The case against It’s not a beauty. It’s as if a giant toddler tipped out its building blocks on to the Essex borders.

Well connected? Very. Trains: every few minutes to Liverpool Street (16-21 minutes) and, the other way, to Brentwood (13); Crossrail should get you to Liverpool Street in 17 minutes, Farringdon in 19 and Bond Street or Shenfield in 24. Driving: the North Circular skirts by, and you’re not far from the A12 and A13 for escaping the Smoke.

Schools Primaries: many “good”, Ofsted says, with Loxford, Cleveland Road, Seven Kings and Christchurch “outstanding”. Secondaries: Loxford, Valentines High, Seven Kings, Isaac Newton Academy and Chadwell Heath Academy all “outstanding”.

Hang out at … The wonderful veggie Indian, Saravanaa Bhavan. Or the Gardener’s Cottage Cafe in Valentines Park.

Where to buy Outside the town centre, it’s a sea of late Victorians, Edwardians and 1920s terraces, semis and a few detacheds. Fanciest is in north Ilford, around Cranbrook, and towards Valentines Park; I rather like the little Garden City Estate. West around Parkway and Egerton Gardens, too. Detacheds, £550,000-£900,000. Semis, £400,000-£800,000. Three-bed terraces, £350,000-£550,000. Flats: two-beds, £200,000-£400,000; one-bed, £170,000-£300,000. Rentals: one-bed flat, £700-£1,200pcm.

Tom Vining “Working in the creative industries, we have fast access to Shoreditch while living in a nice environment with good houses. It’s still a little rough around the edges.”

Mili Acharya “A diverse place, but the growing density of new-build flats is making it overcrowded. The high street’s a bit faded.”

“
Since Tom’s piece, there have been some changes in Ilford, particularly with the advent of Crossrail – remember he wrote this in 2017.
Mohammed Moula, partner in charge of the Ilford office
Mohammed Moula: Partner in charge of the Ilford branch

Why Cunningtons?

  • Fixed Fees
  • Personal Contact
  • Local Branch
  • National Coverage
  • Contact by Phone or Email
  • Great Reviews
  • Award-winning Solicitors
  • Clear Conveyancing Fees

Great service from the team on a simultaneous purchase and sale. Everyone is professional, but warm a friendly too…Mohammed Moula (Partner) and Surinderpal Ghataora (Conveyancing Assistant) worked on my case and were fantastic. I would thoroughly recommend them and would use them again in future.
Josiah Amartey, March 2020

You can also drop into our Ilford office, or call us:

0208 553 0002

Top property solicitors Cunningtons have been running their Ilford branch since 1994.

Excellent, efficient, knowledgeable and friendly service from the team of Satwant Singh, Solicitor and Bernadine Phillips, Secretary. Highly recommend!
Joanna Bunbury February 2020

Find out more about the Ilford branch by clicking here

When you use Cunningtons Solicitors to look after the legal side of buying and selling property, you get a personal service. A solicitor you can talk to face-to-face in branch, or on the phone.

We will talk to you through the conveyancing process, and the costs involved when moving home. We’ll also provide you with a fixed fee quote to help you budget for your move.

Cunningtons’ Ilford branch works with clients across London and beyond, from Harringay to Romford, from Dartford and Purfleet to Stratford and Walthamstow.

We’re popular with people who don’t want to take any chances with moving home, and would rather work with a local firm of conveyancing solicitors they can talk to in person.

Law Society and Lexcel accredited