It’s normal to have lots of questions and maybe feel a little overwhelmed when you’re planning to buy your first home. One stumbling block that often creates confusion is the sheer amount of new terms and phrases that first-time buyers will encounter during the conveyancing journey. What do they all mean?
To help demystify the process, here we’ll tackle some of the key phrases you may discover during the process of buying or selling your home with a clear, plain-English explanation of what they all actually mean!
Conveyancing
Let’s start with a word we’ve used already in this blog... Put simply ‘conveyancing’ is the legal process that transfers ownership of property from one party to another, from a seller to a buyer.
Therefore, conveyancers or conveyancing solicitors are the experts tasked with guiding that process along until you are the official, legal owner of your dream home.
Contract
When going through the conveyancing process you are likely to hear the word ‘contract’ come up in a few different contexts. So, what does it mean exactly?
The contract is simply a legal document that includes all the details of a property purchase, including key details like the specific details of the property along with personal information about both the buyer and the seller.
A lot of the conveyancing process involves drafting this document in collaboration with the seller’s team of conveyancers. The ‘exchange of contracts’ therefore is a key moment when the solicitors for both the buyer and the seller exchange and sign the contracts, making the transaction legally binding.
The phrase ‘subject to contract’ refers to this moment, essentially stating that the property transacation is not legally binding or certain until the contract is finalised, exchanged and signed by all parties.
Disbursements
‘Disbursements’ is a rather long word which can be confusing to get your head around! Like a lot of legal terms, it’s a long word for a relatively simple thing. Disbursements are simply fixed costs that your conveyancer needs to pay throughout the process that are reflected in your costs. Local authority searches are one example of a disbursement, speaking of...
Searches
Property searches are a series of checks which involve making enquiries to a public body to get more information about the property that you’re looking to buy.
Your solicitor will typically get in touch with your relevant local authority to carry out searches to determine important facts about the property. These could reveal potential flood risks, whether it has connection to mains water and gas supplies and whether there are any planning or development restrictions on the property.
Chain
The concept of a property ‘chain’ can also be hard to grasp initially for first-time buyers. If you’re coming into a property purchase as a first-time buyer, it’s likely that you won’t have to sell your property to fund your purchase.
However, the seller is likely looking to buy a house with the money they are looking to receive from selling their house to you.
Therefore, their purchase depends on selling their house, and the owner of the house they are buying also needs to buy a new house with the money from their sale. It's this line of interlinking transactions, each depending on the result of another, which results in a chain.
The state of the chain is a big factor in the time the conveyancing process can take. When sales or purchases further down the chain fall through, this can lead to lengthy delays or even the whole chain collapsing (through sellers/buyer deciding not to sell or buy at all) in some cases.
Fixtures and Fittings
You will likely encounter this phrase when you receive a list of ‘fixtures and fittings’ from the seller’s solicitor, so what exactly are they?
Fixtures and fittings generally are items that are included in your property purchase and that come included with the house or flat you’ve purchased. Fixtures are typically items attached to the property such as built-in cupboards or kitchen units, while fittings are usually freestanding items (though they may be plugged in or attached) such as washing machines and curtains.
This fixture and fittings list helps you plan ahead and see what items you need to get to fully furnish your new home.
Learned something new?
We hope this exploration of commonly misunderstood conveyancing words helps empower your move, equipping you with the knowledge to help move you into your new home smoothly.
For more information about how we at Quality Solicitors Yates and Co can help support your move, learn more about our conveyancing services here or get in touch with our expert team directly here.