What happens on the day of moving house?
Posted on 14th December 2023
The day has arrived when you are moving into your new home, which your Conveyancing Solicitors in Lancaster will refer to as “Completion day”. You are all ready and packed up to go, but you may be wondering what happens on the actual day of completion. Our Conveyancing Solicitors are – not surprisingly- experts in Conveyancing and are Au fait with what moving day entails- both personally and professionally. As such, to help you get your to-do list organised, our Conveyancing Solicitors have explained what you will need to do on the day of completion.
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Exchange of Contracts
Contracts may have already been exchanged, known as ‘the point of no return’, which is when the parties all agree a date and ‘exchange’ contracts, which makes the transaction legally binding. In some cases, however, Exchange of Contracts and Completion can take place simultaneously on the same day. Whichever way your property sale or purchase completion date is agreed, you would usually have at least a little notice, if not weeks or, in some cases, months.
Transfer of Funds
On the day of Completion itself, your conveyancing solicitor in Lancaster will firstly ensure that all monies are available to complete the matter. This includes the balance required from you and, if you are purchasing with the assistance of a mortgage, the mortgage advance. The funds will have already have been requested by your conveyancing solicitor in Lancaster, usually to arrive the day prior to Completion in readiness.
Once all monies are available, your conveyancing solicitor will then prepare the appropriate instructions to the accounts department, who will make the payment of the purchase monies to the sellers’ solicitors’ client account. Once the sellers’ solicitor has received the monies, this is confirmed to all parties and the keys to the property can officially be released. The keys to the property are usually held by the estate agents who will hand over the keys to the new owners of the property.
Time of Completion
Dependent on the length of the chain involved (i.e. if there is more than two parties buying and selling property simultaneously), and all monies being available, Completion usually takes place around midday.
There is a specific Special Condition within the Contract which specifies the time for completion. This can be changed when necessary, for example, if there is a long chain of parties involved, and may be set to an earlier time of 12:00pm in order to allow all parties up the chain to be able to Complete on the same day.
What happens after I’ve got the keys?
Although you now have the keys to your new home, this is not the end of the work for your Conveyancing solicitors in Lancaster. At this point, Completion is confirmed between the buyer and seller’s solicitors, exchanging the relevant documentation required to formalise the matter.
Within 14 days of legal Completion, your Conveyancing Solicitors in Lancaster are required to submit the Stamp Duty Land Tax return on your behalf. Even if no SDLT is payable, your conveyancing solicitors in Lancaster are still required to submit a return form, stating the balance payable is NIL.
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Registration of the Property with the Land Registry
It is then time to have the property registered in the names of the new legal owners of the property. Your conveyancing solicitors in Lancaster will collate the required documentation which includes: the Transfer Deed (TR1), the SDLT5 Certificate – confirming the SDLT return has been completed, the executed Mortgage Deed (if applicable) and an Application to Change the Register Form (usually, form AP1).
The documents are submitted to the Land Registry who will review the same and attend to the registration formalities. At the time of writing in December 2023, Land Registry application timescales can vary, but these can be between 3 and 9 months for registered properties, with unregistered land applications taking anywhere from 12 months to 24 months.
Upon completion of the Registration, the up-to-date title documents will be forwarded to your conveyancing solicitors in Lancaster, showing the property as being registered in the names of the new property owners. Your Conveyancing Solicitor will then forward the completed title documents to the new owners to keep for their records, together with any original paper title deeds that relate to the property. It is important to keep the deeds in a safe place as they will come in use if the property is ever sold.
This then concludes your Conveyancing matter, and the work of your Conveyancing Solicitors in Lancaster is complete and, at MG Legal, we wish you every happiness in your new home.
For more information on Completion of your conveyance, or any other conveyancing query, contact our specialist team of Conveyancing Solicitors in Lancaster today on 01524 581 306 or email them at property@mglegal.co.uk.
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This article was published on 2 May 2018, and has been updated on 14 December 2023.
Tagged as: Conveyancing, Solicitors in Lancaster
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