The stages at a glance
Conveyancing is the legal transfer of a property from one owner to another. In England and Wales it runs through six broad stages: choosing and instructing a solicitor; pre-contract work (title, contract and searches); reviewing and negotiating the contract and enquiries; exchange of contracts; completion; and post-completion registration with the Land Registry.
The single most important structural fact about the process is that nothing is binding until exchange. Until that moment, either side can walk away, which is why the period between offer accepted and exchange is where nearly all the anxiety lives. After exchange, the transaction is contractually locked and the completion date is fixed.
A straightforward freehold purchase with no chain typically takes eight to twelve weeks from instruction to completion. Leasehold purchases and chains add time. A well-run file does not remove the legal steps; it removes the wasted time between them.
Instruction, title and searches
Once you instruct a solicitor, they request the title documents from the seller's side (or, on a purchase, apply for official copies from the Land Registry), verify identity, and open the file with your lender if there is one. On a sale, you will complete property information and fittings forms — the fixtures you are leaving, boundaries you have maintained, disputes or notices affecting the property.
On a purchase, your solicitor orders the standard searches: local authority (planning, building control, roads, enforcement notices), drainage and water, and environmental (contaminated land, flood risk, ground stability). Additional searches — mining, common land, chancel — depend on the location of the property. Searches take two to three weeks in most areas and can be ordered early so they run in parallel with the contract review.
This stage is where problems surface: an extension without building regulations approval, a boundary that does not match the plan, a covenant restricting the use of the property. Finding them is the job. The value of a solicitor is not that problems will not exist; it is that they are found before you are contractually committed.
Contract review, exchange and completion
The contract review is the heart of the work. Your solicitor checks the contract, the title, the seller's forms and the search results, and raises enquiries — anything from 'please confirm this gutter is on your land' to 'this lease has 62 years left and my client's lender will not lend on it'. The answers are negotiated, and when both sides are satisfied, a completion date is agreed.
Exchange is the moment contracts are swapped and the deposit (usually 10%) becomes payable, held by the seller's solicitor. From exchange, both parties are bound. Pulling out after exchange is a breach of contract with real financial consequences.
Completion is the moving day: the balance of the price is transferred, the keys are released, and the property is yours (or, on a sale, the funds are yours). After completion your solicitor pays the stamp duty and registers you as the new owner at the Land Registry — typically a few weeks for a simple registration, longer if the lender's charge is registered at the same time.
Why chains stall, and what shortens the process
Most delays are not legal problems at all. They are chain problems: a buyer two links up is waiting on a mortgage offer, or a seller has not found their onward purchase. A good solicitor manages their own file briskly and presses the other side in the chain; they cannot manage someone else's file for them.
What genuinely shortens a transaction: instructing a solicitor before your offer is accepted rather than after; filling in the seller's forms immediately rather than 'when I get a minute'; responding to enquiries the same day they arrive; and instructing a firm with the capacity to turn work around. Every day an enquiry sits unanswered is a day added to the end of the file.
If you are thinking of selling or buying, the most useful thing you can do today is get a fixed-fee quote and a realistic timescale, so you know what you are signing up to before the chain exists.