When you’re buying a house, your solicitor will look at all the legal and financial elements so you can get on with your move.

Our specialist house buying solicitors will look after the searches, deal with your mortgage provider, and make sure all funds end up in the right accounts. 
Finding your conveyancing solicitor early in the house-buying process is a good idea, as it meeting your house buying solicitors face-to-face. 
Our experienced residential conveyancing solicitors have dealt with the legal side of buying a house many times since we opened our Solihull office, and we’re happy to help you too.

Our fixed-fee quote for your legal fees helps you budget

We all know that budgeting is important, so we make it clear what your conveyancing solicitor fees will be at the outset.

Just fill in this form so we can contact you about the solicitor costs for buying your new house:

Request a quote Solihull

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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 Solihull in His Let’s Move To … column in The Guardian in 2016:

” 

Let’s move to Solihull, West Midlands

Urbs in rure, goes its slogan, though it’s more rure in urbs, with fragments of its quaint past embraced by suburbia

What’s going for it? You say Solly-hull, I say Sow-lihul. It’s all terribly terribly, round here – all Groves, Avenues and Crescents, 1920s lawns and conifers. Under different circumstances, it might have continued life as a small Warwickshire market town with a fine sandstone parish church, a manor house and a huddle of half-timbered cottages, but Brum fattened up in the 20th century, its girth swilling over pretty Solihull. Urbs in rure, goes its slogan, though it’s more rure in urbs, with the fragments of its quaint past now gripped in the suburban embrace of Ramada hotels, John Lewis and labyrinthine avenues called Beechnut Lane. Solihull was voted the best place to live in the UK a few years back and, indeed, it is the kind of untroubling town the nation, had we met by committee, might have agreed on as the optimum place in which to while away our lives, trimming the hedges and polishing the Land Rover.

The case against You can tire of 1920s suburbia. The centre is humdrum.

Well connected? Trains: six or so an hour to Birmingham Moor Street or Snow Hill (12-20 mins), twice hourly to Warwick (20-25 mins) and London Marylebone (an hour and 40 mins to two hours). Driving: 15 mins to Birmingham airport, half an hour to the centre of Birmingham.

Schools: Primaries: GreswoldCoppice JuniorYew TreeSt Alphege C of EMonkspath JuniorWidney JuniorSharmans Cross JuniorOak Cottage are all “good”, says Ofsted. Secondaries: Solihull sixth-form collegeLode Heathand Alderbrook are all “good”, with St Peter’s Catholic and Tudor Grange“outstanding”.

Hang out at … You’ve got your Italian trattorias and your Indians, and decent places such as the Malt Shovel at Barston, but I’d go the extra mile for The Forest at Dorridge.

Where to buy You won’t want for serpentine avenues of weighty Edwardian to 1930s detacheds and semis. Poshest around Hampton and Marsh Lanes, and by Brueton Park; get lost, too, around Streetsbrook Road, Prospect Lane and up to Kineton Green. Farther south, Widney has more mainstream suburbans. Large detacheds and town houses, £550,000-£1.25m. Detacheds, £280,000-£550,000. Semis, £230,000-£370,000. Terraces and cottages, £150,000-£280,000. Flats, £130,000-£250,000. Rentals: one-bed flat, £450-£650pcm; three-bed house, £750-£1,500pcm.

Kiran Sidhu “It’s a lovely place to bring up children. Lots of parks and excellent schools. Apart from the M42, it’s a welcome sanctuary.”

David Evans “The town and villages are surrounded by farms, fields, streams and overhung country lanes within comfortable walking or cycling distance.”

Since Tom’s piece, there may have been some changes, especially in typical house prices!

Aymer Hutton: Partner in charge of the Solihull office
Aymer Hutton: Partner in charge of the Solihull office

Why Cunningtons?

  • Fixed Fees
  • Personal Contact
  • Local Branch
  • National Coverage
  • Contact by Phone or Email
  • Great Reviews
  • Award-winning Solicitors
  • Conveyancing since 1748
  • Experts in Residential Conveyancing
They provided an excellent and very personalized service; it was prompt, professional and above all communicative. We received step by step updates on everything that was happening and any queries were responded to within hours ...
Mashood M Ahmed, April 2018

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

0121 7056868

Top conveyancing solicitors Cunningtons have been helping people move home from their Solihull branch since 1994.

Razwana and team brilliant!, Thank you for your calm, communicative and helpful and professional service. Highly recommended.

Find out more about the Solihull branch by clicking here

When you use Cunningtons Solicitors to look after the legal side of moving home, 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. We’ll also provide you with a fixed fee quote to help you budget for your move.

Cunningtons’ Solihull branch works with clients across the Midlands from Coventry to Birmingham, from Redditch and Bromsgrove to Sutton Coldfield and Walsall – and everywhere in between..

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.

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