5 Ways to Speed Up Your Purchase

Buying property is certainly a big milestone and you are surely keen to see those keys in your hands.   But you may be wondering what you can do to move things along as quickly as possible.

Firstly – make sure you instruct a solicitor as early as possible.  The sooner they can start preparing your file, and carrying out initial compliance tasks, the sooner they can start work for you.

And once you have instructed your solicitor, here are five ways you can make sure that you are doing all you can to help the process go through quickly and smoothly:

1. Submit your mortgage application as soon as your offer is accepted

Most people will have an agreement in principle when looking for property – in fact, most estate agents will ask if you have this before they will allow you to view properties.  They need to know you’re a serious buyer. However, as soon as your offer on the property is accepted get started with the official application process. It is not unheard of for a mortgage offer to take a considerable number of weeks to come through given the current market.

2. Book your survey.

A survey provides so much valuable information to you – particularly if you’re purchasing an older home. A survey can highlight areas you need to be aware of, and in some instances give you some bargaining power if there are any major repairs that need to be addressed. Try and get this booked in as soon as you can so that any issues can be highlighted and remedied early in the transaction.  If the survey does identify any major issue which might be a deal breaker for you, much better to have this information sooner rather than later.

3. Ask your solicitor to order their searches as soon as they receive all paperwork from the seller’s solicitor

Searches are all part of the process of piecing together as much information about the property as possible, so that you can make sure that you’re happy to commit to the purchase.  Your solicitor will carry out environmental, drainage, and local authority searches.  Depending on where the property is they may also carry out a mining search, to ensure there’s no history of subsidence for instance.  Some clients will ask us not to submit searches until after the mortgage offer has been issued.  But the earlier these are submitted, the earlier the results will be back with your solicitor to review, and any issues can be identified and dealt with.

4. Provide as much funding information as you possibly can to your solicitor

We promise you, we’re not being nosy. Lawyers are governed by very strict anti-money laundering regulations, so we have to be thorough when looking at how you’ve built up the funds for your deposit or cash purchase. Where is your money coming from? For instance, if the funds are ‘savings’ we need to know where those savings have come from.  Were they a gift from a relative, or from an inheritance? Or, are your funds coming from a company you are a director of? Is it from a previous house sale or remortgage? Did you win the lottery?

Any information is useful to us, but we are also likely to need to ask you for any relevant documents to provide a ‘paper trail’ of the funds. If we can discuss this with you early in the transaction, we can make sure that we have all  necessary information from you, rather than trying to find copies of old documents just before exchange and completion.

5. Sign and return documents to us as quickly as you can

This is fairly self-explanatory but when you’re sent documents for signing – contract, transfer deed, mortgage deed, etc. – please sign and return them as soon as you can. We can’t move to exchange and completion without signed documents on our file, so if we’re otherwise ready but we need your signed documents, there’ll be a delay until you send them to us. Sending them to us early can also mean if there are any errors on signing then we can rectify the situation without hindering progress of your purchase.

Perhaps the key point is that buying and selling property is a process of obtaining a lot of information from a number of different sources, and then piecing that information together so that can be sure that your purchase is a good decision.

Poole Alcock offer a multi-award winning conveyancing service, as voted for by our clients, and we would be delighted to help you with your next move.  Visit our website for a quote, or call us on 0800 470 0337.