Selling a property?
We need to obtain the Title Deeds to your property from your Bank or Building Society and we will ask you to complete some forms giving information about the property including details of the boundaries and of any disputes or building works carried out.
You must make sure you give full and accurate answers to these questions. If in doubt, phone us and ask for help.
You will also be asked to fill in a Fixtures and Fittings form, listing the items that you will be including in the sale and what you will be taking with you. If you decide that you want to sell some items separately you can mention it on the form.
Once an offer has been made
We will prepare a contract and send copies of the Title Deeds and the forms which you have completed to the buyer’s solicitors.
The buyer’s solicitors may ask a number of questions before they are in a position to exchange contracts. They may also have to wait until the buyer has a mortgage offer and they have received the results of their search at the Local Authority.
Exchange of Contracts
You will be asked to sign the contract in readiness for exchange and your buyer will sign an identical contract. These contracts are then exchanged and your buyer will pay a deposit, normally 10% of the purchase price but it can be 5% if your buyer is obtaining a 95% mortgage.
On exchange of contracts a date for completion is agreed which is normally 2-4 weeks after exchange.
If you are involved in a chain everyone will have to agree the same completion date and exchange contracts at the same time. This means that nobody will be committed to buy a property before being committed to sell. Unfortunately chains can break down before exchange and everyone must wait until all links are complete again.
You must remember that until contracts are exchanged no agreement between you and the buyer is binding. The buyer can withdraw at anytime before you exchange contracts. There may be nothing that we or the estate agent can do to prevent this although we will do our best to make sure a sale proceeds. If the buyer withdraws after exchange you can keep the deposit. If you withdraw after exchange then you would have to pay compensation to your buyer.
After contracts are exchanged we will obtain a redemption statement from your mortgage lender and the bill from your estate agent. A financial statement will then be prepared showing the balance that will be payable to you on completion.
On completion of the sale we will repay your mortgage and pay the estate agents commission and deduct our fees. The balance will be sent to you or can be used as part of the purchase price if you are buying a property at the same time.
You should bear in mind that you will also need to budget for removal costs.
Completion
On the day of completion you must completely clear the property of everything except those items listed on the fixtures, fittings or contents form. You should not remove fixtures, e.g. light fittings, switches, items fixed to the property. The contract will say that you must vacate the property by 1pm at the latest although you will probably be ready to leave before this. You must not hand the keys to the buyer until we have confirmed that the purchase price has been paid into our bank account by the buyers solicitors.
The safest way to deal with this is to leave the keys with the estate agent who will not hand them to the buyer until authorised to do so by us.
For further information, feel free to telephone us on 020 8299 0021 or email : residentialproperty@glazerdelmar.com