Buying a home is, for most people, the largest transaction of their lives — and in England and Wales it runs on a legal process called conveyancing. Understanding its stages turns an opaque, anxious wait into a sequence you can follow, anticipate, and steer.
Conveyancing is the legal work of transferring ownership of land or property from a seller to a buyer. It begins the moment an offer is accepted and ends when the property is registered in your name at HM Land Registry. Between those two points sits a careful choreography of contracts, investigations, and money movements, each designed to ensure that what you are buying is genuinely what you think it is — and that you take it free of unwelcome surprises.
An accepted offer in England and Wales is not legally binding. Either side can walk away, renegotiate, or accept a higher bid right up until the formal moment of "exchange." That feature — sometimes frustrating, occasionally exploited through "gazumping" — shapes the entire process and explains why momentum matters so much.
What conveyancing is — from offer to completion
Once your offer is accepted, the seller's estate agent issues a memorandum of sale, and each side instructs a conveyancer — a solicitor or licensed conveyancer. From there the transaction moves through four broad phases: pre-contract investigation, exchange of contracts, the period to completion, and post-completion formalities.
Through it all, your conveyancer acts as both investigator and gatekeeper, raising enquiries, reporting risks, and refusing to let you become legally committed until they are satisfied the title is sound and the money is safe. The pace is rarely under one party's sole control — it depends on searches, lenders, surveyors, and often a chain of linked transactions above and below you.
The pre-contract work
This is the longest and most important phase, and the one where good conveyancing earns its fee. The seller's solicitor sends a draft contract together with the title documents and the standard protocol forms — the Property Information Form and the Fittings and Contents Form. Your solicitor examines the title to confirm the seller owns what they are selling and to identify any rights, covenants, or charges affecting it.
At the same time, your solicitor orders the property searches. These reveal matters that a viewing never could — planning decisions, road schemes, contamination, flood risk, and the practical question of whether the property is connected to mains water and drainage.
The standard searches each illuminate a different layer of risk hidden beneath the bricks and mortar:
- Local authority search — planning permissions and refusals, building regulation history, road adoption status, conservation areas, listed-building status, and nearby enforcement notices.
- Drainage and water search — whether the property is connected to public water supply and sewerage, where the public sewers run, and who is responsible for maintenance.
- Environmental search — historical land use, contamination risk, flood risk, ground stability, and proximity to landfill or other hazards.
- Other targeted searches — depending on location, your solicitor may also recommend coal mining, chancel repair, or other regional searches.
The results of these searches drive your solicitor's enquiries — written questions put to the seller's side to clear up anything ambiguous or concerning. In parallel, two private decisions sit with you: commissioning a survey and securing your mortgage. A survey, ranging from a basic condition report to a full structural survey, assesses the building's physical state; a mortgage valuation, by contrast, serves only the lender and is no substitute for your own survey. Your formal mortgage offer must be in hand before you commit, because at exchange you become bound to buy whether or not the funds materialise.
An accepted offer is a statement of intent; only exchange of contracts makes it a promise the law will enforce. Everything before exchange is, in legal terms, provisional.
The exchange of contracts
Exchange is the pivotal moment of any purchase. Once your solicitor and the seller's solicitor exchange signed, identical contracts — traditionally by reading them to one another over the telephone under an agreed Law Society formula — the agreement becomes legally binding on both sides. Neither party can now withdraw without serious financial consequences.
At exchange you pay a deposit, conventionally ten per cent of the purchase price, which is held by the seller's solicitor. If you were to default after exchange, that deposit is generally forfeit, and you could face a claim for further losses. The contract also fixes the completion date — the day ownership and occupation actually pass — which the two sides will have agreed, taking account of any chain. Exchange and completion can be days or weeks apart, or occasionally simultaneous.
Because so much turns on this moment, your solicitor will not exchange until every condition is met: searches returned and satisfactory, enquiries resolved, your mortgage offer received, the deposit funds cleared, and your buildings insurance arranged to take effect from exchange.
Completion and afterwards
On the completion date, your solicitor sends the balance of the purchase price to the seller's solicitor. Once those funds are received, completion takes place: legal ownership passes to you, the seller's solicitor authorises release of the keys through the estate agent, and the property is yours to occupy.
The work does not end there. Your solicitor must deal with Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) — a tax payable on most property purchases above the relevant threshold in England and Northern Ireland. The amount depends on the price, your circumstances, and whether reliefs apply; rates and thresholds are set by the government and change from time to time, so current figures must always be checked. The SDLT return must be filed and any tax paid within the statutory deadline after completion.
Finally, your solicitor applies to register you as the new proprietor at HM Land Registry and to register your lender's charge if you have a mortgage. Until that registration is complete, the public record does not yet reflect your ownership, which is why prompt registration matters. Once registered, the title is updated and your purchase is, at last, fully concluded.
One warning deserves emphasis at this stage. The large sums moving between accounts on completion make property transactions a prime target for fraud — criminals impersonate your solicitor and send a last-minute email "updating" the bank details for your funds. Always verify any account details by telephone using a number you already hold, never one supplied in an email. We explain how these scams work, and how to defeat them, in our guide to property and conveyancing fraud.
- Conveyancing runs from offer to completion; in England and Wales an accepted offer is not binding until exchange of contracts.
- Pre-contract work — title checks, searches, enquiries, the survey, and your mortgage offer — is where risks are found and resolved.
- At exchange you pay a deposit, the deal becomes legally binding, and the completion date is fixed.
- On completion, funds transfer, keys are released, and your solicitor handles Stamp Duty Land Tax and registration at HM Land Registry.
- Completion funds are a fraud target — always verify bank details by a trusted telephone number before transferring.
How Crejj & Partners can help
Our Real Estate team guides buyers and sellers through every stage of a residential or commercial transaction — examining title, interpreting searches, raising and answering enquiries, and steering exchange and completion with meticulous attention to detail. We anticipate the issues that delay or derail a purchase, coordinate with lenders and the rest of the chain, and put robust safeguards around your money to protect you from conveyancing fraud. Whether you are a first-time buyer, moving home, or investing, we will make sure the property that ends up in your name is exactly the one you bargained for.
This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice or create a solicitor–client relationship. It describes the law of England & Wales, which may change; seek tailored advice for your circumstances. Crejj & Partners is a fictional firm presented for illustrative purposes on this website.