Conveyancing Lawyers for First Time Buyers What to Expect Buying your own home for the first time can be a highly daunting prospect. The legal side of purchasing property is full of new words and terms that you may not understand and almost everybody knows someone who has a horror story about buying property, involving sellers pulling out at the last minute or other nightmare scenarios. It is easy to be intimidated by the world of property law and property lawyers, particularly if you have had no dealings with solicitors in the past, but Conveyancing Lawyers are there to do the hard work for you and good online conveyancing services will help to reduce your stress, rather than add to it. What is conveyancing? Conveyancing is a word you may not have come across before deciding to buy a home. It simply describes the legal process when property changes hands from one person to another. Residential conveyancing is the type that you’re most likely to be involved in, dealing with the buying, selling and renting of homes and personal properties. Commercial conveyancing deals with sales and leases of business properties. What do Conveyancing Solicitors do? Conveyancing Solicitors or Conveyancing Lawyers (same thing) deal with all the paperwork and steps that are required by law for transfer of equity that is transferring the title deeds of a property from one person’s name to another. When you are buying a property, you need to employ the services of a Conveyancing Solicitor. They will take over from the time you make an offer with the estate agent and instruct you on any documents that need to be signed and organise environmental, water and drainage and Local Authority searches. They also arrange for payment of relevant taxes and work with your mortgage lender to arrange funding of the purchase. Conveyancing services will also be needed if you choose to remortgage your property in the future or for drawing up residential property leases if you decide to rent the property out. How long does conveyancing take? The length of from putting in an offer as little longer than a property can be as 6 weeks or could take 12 weeks, depending on time to searches and other buyers and sellers in the property chain. As a first time buyer, you are placed at the bottom of the chain, which usually makes things more straightforward. The average conveyancing time is around 10 weeks. Whether you are selling or buying leasehold property, legal paperwork is required to organise the official transfer of equity from one name to another and conveyance services prepare this paperwork for you, as well as arranging for transfer of funds and mortgage checking and contract documents. Many home owners and buyers opt to use a conveyance service that is suggested by their estate agent, but conveyancing solicitors or conveyancing lawyers can vary a lot both in terms of fees and in services offered, so it is worth doing the research and hiring your own conveyancing lawyers. The residential conveyancing process usually takes between six and eight weeks from deciding on a property purchase to moving in, but this timeline can be slowed down by several factors. When the property is part of a chain, where the seller is also buying another property at the same time, this can sometimes cause significant delays, particularly if the chain is long and involves many properties.