Conveyancing covers everything from the moment your offer is accepted to when you receive the keys (or hand them over). A conveyancer — either a solicitor or a licensed conveyancer — handles the legal work on your behalf. The process is similar whether you're buying, selling, or both, though the tasks at each end differ.
What a conveyancer does for buyers
Your conveyancer's job is to make sure you're buying what you think you're buying, with no hidden legal problems. Their work includes reviewing the draft contract and title documents from the seller's solicitor, conducting property searches, raising enquiries (questions about the property), arranging for you to sign the contract, handling the exchange of contracts and transfer of funds, registering your ownership with the Land Registry, and paying Stamp Duty on your behalf.
What a conveyancer does for sellers
The seller's conveyancer prepares the contract pack, answers the buyer's enquiries, negotiates contract terms, handles the financial side of completion, and deals with paying off any existing mortgage on the property.
Property searches
Searches are investigations into the property and its surroundings. They're conducted by your conveyancer on your behalf. The main searches are:
Local authority search: Checks planning history, building regulation approvals, road schemes, conservation areas, tree preservation orders, and whether the property is listed. Timescales vary wildly by council — some take a few days, others six weeks or more.
Environmental search: Checks for contaminated land, flood risk, subsidence risk, and proximity to landfill sites. Usually completed within 48 hours from a data provider.
Water and drainage search: Confirms whether the property is connected to mains water and drainage, and whether public sewers run under or near the property. Relevant because building over a public sewer requires consent.
Chancel repair liability search: An obscure but potentially expensive liability — some properties can be required to contribute to the repair of the local medieval parish church. An indemnity policy is cheap and usually the preferred solution.
Your lender will require most of these searches as a condition of the mortgage. Even cash buyers should consider them — they reveal issues that could affect the property's value or your ability to sell in future.
Enquiries and replies
After reviewing the search results and title documents, your conveyancer raises enquiries — questions for the seller to answer. These might cover boundary disputes, rights of way, planning permission for extensions, guarantees for building work, and any discrepancies in the documentation.
This back-and-forth between solicitors is often the slowest part of the process. Multiple rounds of enquiries can add weeks. If your conveyancer is asking reasonable questions, the delay is usually worthwhile — better to discover problems before you've committed than after.
Exchange of contracts
Once searches are clear, enquiries are satisfactorily answered, your mortgage offer is in place, and both parties are ready, you exchange contracts. This is typically done over the phone between solicitors. At exchange, you pay your deposit (usually 10%) and the completion date is fixed. From this point, the sale is legally binding.
If you're in a chain, everyone in the chain exchanges simultaneously. This coordination is one of the reasons chains can cause delays — every party needs to be ready at the same time.
Completion
On completion day, your solicitor transfers the purchase money to the seller's solicitor. Once confirmed, the seller's agent releases the keys to you. Your solicitor then submits the Stamp Duty return and payment to HMRC (within 14 days of completion) and registers your ownership with the Land Registry.
How long does conveyancing take?
A straightforward purchase with no chain typically takes 8-12 weeks from instruction to completion. With a chain, 12-16 weeks is more realistic. The main variables are local authority search times, the speed of enquiry responses, mortgage offer processing, and chain-related delays.
You can help speed things up by returning documents promptly, responding quickly to your conveyancer's requests, chasing your mortgage lender if needed, and maintaining communication with the estate agent who can nudge other parties.
Conveyancing costs
Solicitor or conveyancer fees typically range from £800 to £2,000+ for the legal work, depending on the property value and complexity. On top of this, you pay disbursements — the actual cost of searches, Land Registry fees, and Stamp Duty. A detailed quote should break these down clearly.
Beware of very cheap quotes. They sometimes come with hidden extras or indicate a high-volume, low-attention operation. Your conveyancer is protecting arguably your biggest financial asset — paying a bit more for a responsive, competent professional is money well spent.
Choosing a conveyancer
You can use a solicitor (a qualified lawyer who may also handle other legal work) or a licensed conveyancer (a specialist in property law). Both are regulated and insured. Ask for recommendations from your mortgage broker, friends, or family. Key questions: how many transactions are they currently handling? What's their average completion time? Who will be doing the day-to-day work — a qualified professional or an unqualified case handler?