What are legal enquiries?
31/01/2023
(Last Updated: 22/11/2023)
81,215
5 min read
The legal enquiries stage is the technical stage of the conveyancing process and is undertaken by the buyer's solicitor/conveyancer. The solicitor reviews all of the following documents:
- Contract of sale
- Property Information Forms including TA6, TA10 and (if leasehold) TA7
- Sale memorandum
- Title deeds
- Title plan
- Warranties and/or guarantees
- (if leasehold) Lease
- (if leasehold) Leasehold Management Pack
The seller's solicitor provides all of the above documents (except the sales memo) to the buyer's solicitor in what is called the draft contract pack.
What questions to ask a solicitor when buying a house
We've compiled a list of the top legal enquiries solicitors raise, what they mean and what the solution is. We even rate how hard the enquiry is to reply to. Its free to use so click below and get searching!
What enquiries do solicitors raise?
The objective of the buyer's solicitor, when raising enquiries with the seller, is for them to satisfy themselves that the property being purchased is both 'mortgageable' and 'sellable' on the open market (even if you aren't getting a mortgage).
Imagine buying a property and finding out that there wasn't planning permission or building control sign off and now you own a property that you can't sell for what you bought it for. This is why you need a solicitor to review all of the legal paperwork to spot issues such as this.
The actual raising of enquiries is a lot like a 'Q&A' between the seller and the buyer. Some of the enquiries which get raised are from the solicitor and others may be from you. The solicitor looks through the draft contract for legal issues (such as the ones listed above).
However, you may be interested to find out other non-legal enquiries such as; can the sellers make repairs to the property before you exchange?
Frequently Asked Questions
HOWLONG
OUTSTANDING
ENQUIRIES
AFTERENQ
Written by:
Andrew Boast
Andrew started his career in 2000 working within conveyancing solicitor firms and grew hands on knowledge of a wide variety of conveyancing challenges and solutions. After helping in excess of 50,000 clients in his career, he uses all this experience within his article writing for SAM, mainstream media and his self published book How to Buy a House Without Killing Anyone.
Reviewed by:
Caragh Bailey
Caragh is an excellent writer in her own right as well as an accomplished copy editor for both fiction and non-fiction books, news articles and editorials. She has written extensively for SAM for a variety of conveyancing, survey and mortgage related articles.
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