Conveyancing when you sell

What your conveyancer does when you sell

The estate agent finds your buyer. Your conveyancer does everything after that. Selling involves less investigation than buying — you are not the one taking on an unknown property — but considerably more paperwork, because you are the source of most of the information the buyer's side needs.

How quickly you complete the forms and produce your documents is the single biggest factor in how fast a sale moves that is genuinely within your control.

The contract pack

Your conveyancer assembles and sends the buyer's solicitor a pack containing the draft contract, official copies of the title from HM Land Registry, and the property forms you complete.

• The TA6 Property Information Form — boundaries, disputes with neighbours, alterations and consents, guarantees, insurance history, services and utilities. [What the TA6 asks](/blog/what-is-a-ta6-form/).
• The TA10 Fittings and Contents Form — exactly what stays and what goes, item by item. [What counts as a fixture](/blog/what-is-a-ta10-form/).
• For leasehold, the TA7 Leasehold Information Form plus a management pack from the freeholder or managing agent. [What the TA7 covers](/blog/what-is-a-ta7-form/) and [what an LPE1 pack contains](/blog/what-is-an-lpe1-pack/).
• Your EPC, which you must have before the property is marketed. [What an EPC measures](/blog/what-is-an-epc/).

Answer the TA6 accurately. It is not a formality: you are under a duty not to mislead, and a buyer who later discovers a dispute or an unapproved extension you did not disclose may have a claim against you after completion.

Enquiries

The buyer's solicitor will raise enquiries arising from your forms, the title and their searches. Some are routine. Others need documents you may need to find or apply for — a building regulations completion certificate for a loft conversion, a FENSA certificate for replacement windows, a guarantee for damp work.

Where a document does not exist, the usual solution is indemnity insurance, which protects against the consequences of the missing consent rather than curing it. Gathering these before the enquiries arrive, rather than after, is the most effective thing a seller can do to shorten a transaction. [What happens when work was done without approval](/blog/what-is-planning-permission/).

Exchange, completion and your mortgage

Once enquiries are answered and the buyer's finance is in place, contracts are exchanged and the completion date becomes fixed and binding on both sides.

On completion, your conveyancer receives the purchase money, uses it to redeem your outstanding mortgage, settles the estate agent's commission and their own fee from the proceeds, and sends you the balance. They then confirm to the buyer's solicitor that the mortgage has been discharged so the buyer can be registered as owner.

Redemption is time-sensitive: your lender provides a redemption figure valid to a specific date, and interest accrues daily until the mortgage is repaid.

No Sale—No Fee

Sales fall through, usually because of something further down the chain rather than anything either party did. PropertyLawyers4You offers No Sale—No Fee on all sale properties, so the legal fee is not charged if the sale does not complete.

Disbursements already paid out to third parties are a separate matter and remain payable — no firm can refund a document it has already bought on your behalf. Ask for the position in writing before work begins, on any quote from anyone.