Moving Home? Help us to help you.

For many people, buying or selling a home can take longer than anticipated. This can be due to many factors but if we can get the paperwork organised early on in the transaction that should help in getting the completion date you prefer.

We have a few tips to pass on to help to when moving home:-

You should keep the documents sent to you by your solicitor when you purchase a property and add to them any new certificates as and when you do work to your property. That should make it easier for you to send everything over to your solicitor when you decide to sell the property in the future.

At the start of the conveyancing process, we will ask you  to complete various questionnaires about the property and to provide copies of any paperwork such as planning and building regulation approvals, certificates and guarantees for replacement windows or gas central heating, or electrical work. Wood burners are popular nowadays and should have a HETAS certificate when they are installed. Do not forget about documents for work carried out by a previous owner as they may still be relevant.

If your house is less than 10 years old, make sure that you provide the building warranty as well. This might be from NHBC but there are also other companies.

If you are selling a flat, we will need to obtain a management pack from the Management Company so you will need to pass on the contact details of the Management Company that collects your service charge and ground rent. There may be two different companies involved. The company will charge a fee to provide this and it can be between £300 and £500.

We will send on all this information to the buyer’s solicitor with the contract. The buyer’s solicitor will usually ask additional questions so if we can provide a full and complete pack of information about the property with copies of all the guarantees and certificates at the beginning that should help reduce the number of additional questions.

If you cannot find all the paperwork, don’t panic though. We may be able to get copies from other sources or take out indemnity insurance policies which provide insurance cover to your buyer where paperwork is missing. You may have an indemnity policy already from when you purchased the property so if we can that also we can reuse it and pass on to your buyer.

If you have any questions  or concerns, please do telephone us Kerseys Solicitors in Ipswich Suffolk 01473 213311 or Kerseys Solicitors in Colchester Essex 01206 584584 where a member of our Residential Property Team will be happy to speak with you.