Are you moving home? At our Braintree branch, we have a team of solicitors dealing with all aspects of residential property transactions
From sale or purchase of both freehold and leasehold properties to re-mortgages, transfers of equity and agreed lease extensions, our property solicitors look after all the legal aspects of your move.
When you use Cunningtons solicitors to help with the legal side of property transactions, you can relax. We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), and have security written into our DNA!
Why use conveyancing solicitors?
When you are buying, selling or remortgaging property in England or Wales, it needs to be legally ‘conveyanced’. Conveyancing is the legal transfer of property between parties, and ‘residential conveyancing‘ means that the property in question is residential, rather than commercial.
Although anyone can conveyance a property themselves, using a firm of conveyancing solicitors to act for you is far easier than learning how to do it yourself.
Online conveyancing, or face-to-face?
Using a local firm of conveyancing solicitors – like Cunningtons – means that you know who you are dealing with. You have one conveyancing solicitor assigned to your transaction, and you are likely to have met them personally at their office, or at least to have spoken to them on the phone.
This means that you are dealing with someone personally, which helps when the matter is as important as your home.
When you deal with a firm of online conveyancers, the service is necessarily remote. This may be absolutely fine, but if an issue comes up with your property it’s much easier to deal with it if you are dealing with a conveyancing solicitor near you, instead of choosing online conveyancing.
What’s the problem?
Need advice on a legal matter? Why not visit our advice centre in Braintree to discuss your concerns with us.
Does using a conveyancing solicitor cost more?
The legal conveyancing fees you pay when working with all conveyancing services are broadly similar; and any differences in associated legal fees will be a very small percentage of the costs of buying property. You can easily get a range of quotes for conveyancing fees to compare.
Get A Quote
Click here to order your quote from our residential conveyancing solicitors
Conveyancing for Buying Property
Once you have agreed to your conveyancing quote for our legal fees, the process for purchasing your property involves contacting the seller’s conveyancing solicitors to check the title deeds, running required searches, liaising with your mortgage company to confirm the money is in place, and reporting back to you with all the required documents for you to sign.
Then when you have exchanged contracts, we:
- make sure the deposit money is in the right place,
- prepare all the completion papers and statements,
- submit the ‘certificate of title’ to your lender,
- make sure all search information is received,
- then make sure that money from the mortgage lender is in the correct account.
Finally, it’s time for completion – that’s when we:
- make sure all the money has been paid to the seller’s solicitors in exchange for the deeds and documents,
- resolve the account with you,
- pay your stamp duty,
- and finally, register you as the new owner with the Land Registry.
For more information on what your property lawyers do during the buying part of the conveyancing process, click here.
Conveyancing for Selling Property
When it comes to selling your house or flat, the residential conveyancing process is slightly simpler, though the legal side is just as important. Start off by asking our property lawyers for a fixed-fee conveyancing quote.
When you have agreed to our conveyancing legal fees quote and signed up with us as your conveyancing solicitors:
- your mortgage company sends us your title deeds, as well as a statement of the amount of money you still owe for your property.
- Your buyer’s property lawyers then ask us for any other information they need.
- We then prepare a sale contract with preferred dates to complete – this leads to the Exchange of Contracts.
- The buyer’s solicitor then transfers the deposit money into our client account,
- then we get a statement from your mortgage company.
- As your conveyancing solicitor, we receive the money we need to pay your estate agent’s commission fee, and this is all accounted for in your financial statement.
After Completion,
- we move the money gained from the sale to you, your estate agent, and your mortgage company.
- We arrange for your estate agent to hand over the keys to your property’s new owner.
- We then send you any remaining money, as well as a statement detailing all the expenses of your sale.
- Finally, we send over the title deeds to the buyer’s property lawyers – and your property is sold.
For more information on the selling part of the conveyancing process, click here.
Conveyancing for Remortgaging your Home
Our conveyancing solicitors are not all about moving home; we can help with remortgaging too. When you remortgage your property in Braintree or elsewhere, you still need to make sure the legal side is taken care of to ensure your home is secure.
Our conveyancing service has you covered here too.
Once you have agreed to our quote, your named solicitor receives your title deeds, and a copy of your title from the Land Registry. They then run searches as required.
Your lender then sends your solicitor your new mortgage offer, and you get sent the mortgage deed to sign.
They arrange to receive the money from your new loan and get an updated account of your loan amount. One or two final search checks, then your remortgage is complete – the remaining money goes into the correct accounts and your remortgage is registered with the Land Registry.
Read more about conveyancing for remortgaging.
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What areas does the Braintree branch cover?
Each Cunningtons’ branch has a team of expert property lawyers who usually cover property transactions in their area – so the Braintree branch would deal with property in Braintree, Essex, the Solihull branch focusses on the Solihull area in West Midlands, etc.
Our Braintree branch is near you if you are looking at most of north Essex and its towns and villages. It is within easy reach of Stansted Airport and the towns of Bishops Stortford, Sudbury, Saffron Waldon and Halstead.
However, the population of the UK is fairly mobile. and dealing with residential conveyancing solicitors face-to-face is possible using our network of branches.
Cunningtons Solicitors in Braintree, Essex
Great Square
Braintree
Essex
CM7 1UD
United Kingdom
Tel: 01376 326868
Fax: 01376 550003
Staff Spotlight
Kate Horsted
Conveyancing Partner
Kate Horsted is a Residential Conveyancing solicitor and partner working out of our Braintree office.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some questions that our Braintree branch gets asked: if you need an answer to a question that is not on this list, please contact us for an answer.
Should I use an online conveyancing company?
We do not generally recommend using an online conveyancer; though you often pay slightly lower conveyancing fees, 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 property solicitor who is working on your case face-to-face.
What is the difference between a conveyancing solicitor and a conveyancer?
A conveyancing solicitor is regulated by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), is a member of the Law Society, will have degree-level qualifications and at least two years on the job training before qualifying.
Whereas a conveyancer tends to be regulated by the Council for Licenced Conveyancers (CLC) and is usually less qualified, although they can still be perfectly competent.
How do I avoid fraudulent transactions when moving house?
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; your property solicitors will tell you other ways to pay your legal fees.
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.
What happens in the conveyancing process?
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 your home:
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.
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.
When I ask for a conveyancing quote, do I have to pay anything?
All our conveyancing quotes are free and you are not obliged to use us.
However, we have found that most people who receive a quotation for our conveyancing services are happy to use us and remain loyal customers for future moves!
Is there a difference between freehold and leasehold conveyancing?
The short answer is yes.
When dealing with leasehold transactions, there are many more things to check during the conveyancing process, including ground rent, service charges, licences under the Lease and leasehold covenants (obligations).
For this reason we charge an additional fee for dealing with leasehold transactions.
How long does conveyancing take?
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.
What searches does a conveyancer do?
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.