Six Step Guide to Purchasing your First Home

Now that the economy has begun to improve, we find that we are seeing a spike in first time buyers coming to us for advice and assistance in buying their first home. We appreciate that while this is an extremely exciting time it can also be quite daunting. Most people don’t know the process that is followed in a conveyancing transaction and not being aware of the steps involved can cause a lot of unnecessary stress. We have put together the following guide to remove some of the mystery involved in purchasing your first home.

• Once you have decided on the property you want to buy and have had your offer accepted you will be asked to put down a ‘booking deposit’. This is generally a refundable deposit paid directly to the auctioneer selling the property. At this stage you will need to let the auctioneer know what solicitor will be representing you in your purchase – for the purposes of this post we are going to assume you have picked Carey Murphy.
• Next, the auctioneer writes to us with a ‘Sales Advice Letter’. This contains all the basic information about the property and the Vendors (Sellers) details. Once we receive this, we will immediately write to the Vendor’s solicitor asking them to send us Contracts for Sale.
• Usually we will receive contracts within two weeks. Once we receive contracts, we will investigate the title to the property. This involves reviewing the Deeds as well as tax and planning documentation to make sure you are getting what is called ‘Good Marketable Title’. This step can take a little bit of time while we raise any pre-contract enquiries, we have with the Vendors Solicitor and they provide replies. If you are taking out a mortgage this is a good time to make sure you have your Letter of Loan Offer and that your bank is sending us your loan pack, we will need this once the title investigation step is over.
• Once we are happy that the title being offered by the Vendors is good and marketable, we will meet you to sign your contracts and loan documentation (if you are getting a mortgage). At this point you pay the rest of your deposit. A ‘Contract Deposit’ is typically 10% of the entire cost of the property. The ‘booking deposit’ you paid in step one is part of this 10%. Once everything is signed, we send the contracts and your contract deposit to the Vendors solicitor.
• The Vendor will then sign the contracts and return one to our office. At this point the closing date (the date you will get you keys) will have been agreed and we will arrange for your mortgage monies to be transferred to our account for that date.
• On the closing date we raise our last searches against the Vendor, these check for bankruptcies, judgments, insolvency arrangements etc. Providing these are clear we arrange with the Vendors Solicitor to exchange the balance purchase monies for the title deeds to the property. The keys are then released to you.

Every house purchase is different, but the above guide is an outline of what is typically involved. If you have any questions or would like to discuss the process in more detail, please either call or email a member of our team who will be more than happy to help.