Conveyancing has a reputation for opacity that it partly deserves and partly earns by being poorly explained. Underneath the correspondence there are only four questions, and every document produced is an attempt to answer one of them.
- Does the seller own what they are selling, and can they transfer it?
- What exactly is included — which land, which rights, which obligations?
- Is anything known about the property or its surroundings that would change your mind?
- Are there conditions attached that will still bind you afterwards?
Title
The first task is to establish ownership and the exact extent of what is owned. That means the registered title or the deeds, the plan showing the boundary, and any entries recording rights over the land: a neighbour's right of way, a covenant restricting what can be built or done, a right for a utility to run services beneath. These bind whoever owns the property next, which is why they are checked before rather than after.
Searches, and what each one asks
| Category | The question it asks |
|---|---|
| Local authority | Is there anything on the authority's registers: planning decisions, enforcement, building control records, road adoption status, nearby schemes? |
| Drainage and water | Is the property connected to public foul and surface water drainage and to a mains supply, and do public sewers cross the land? |
| Environmental | Is there a recorded history of contamination, landfill, flooding or ground instability at or near the site? |
| Ground and mining | In relevant areas, has the ground beneath been worked, and is there a subsidence history? |
| Chancel, commons and local variants | Region-specific liabilities and rights that attach to particular land. |
Searches are answered by third parties who have their own queues. This is the main reason the middle of a transaction feels like nothing is happening. Nothing is: everyone is waiting for an authority to reply.
Enquiries
Alongside the searches runs a set of questions put directly to the seller, partly on standard forms and partly in response to whatever the title and searches throw up. This is where the transaction usually stalls, and it stalls for an unglamorous reason: each answer requires the seller to find a piece of paper from a filing habit that may be twenty years old. Where the paper does not exist — a consent never obtained, a certificate never issued — there are established ways to deal with the gap, but the gap first has to be admitted.
Leasehold and shared structures
Where a property is held on a lease or shares a building, a further layer applies: the lease terms themselves, its remaining length, the service charge and how it is set, the sinking fund and what it holds, any planned major works, ground rent and how it escalates, and the rules on alterations, letting and pets. A short lease and an unpredictable service charge are the two items most likely to affect both what a property is worth and whether it can be borrowed against at all.
Exchange and completion
Exchange is the point at which the agreement becomes binding and a completion date is fixed. Before it, in many jurisdictions, either side may withdraw. After it, withdrawing has real financial consequences. Completion is the day money moves, the transfer is executed and possession passes. Afterwards the transfer is registered and any transaction tax dealt with — unglamorous but essential, since an unregistered transfer is a problem that surfaces years later at the worst moment.
Legal requirements, search types and terminology vary considerably between jurisdictions and change over time. This page describes the shape of the process, not the law of any particular place, and it is not legal advice.