What is a Section 278 Agreement?

A Section 278 Agreement is a legal agreement between a developer and a highway authority to carry out highway works.

Offer Accepted, Now What? | Wollens Solicitors Devon

So you have had your offer accepted on a new home, congratulations! But now what? This can be quite baffling – Property Conveyancer Mark Iddles gives a helpful overview of what comes next:

The first step is for you to instruct a conveyancer to act on your behalf in the legal process. They will be responsible for advising you and protecting your legal interest while purchasing the property. Once you have selected an individual or firm to act on your behalf, the estate agent will then send out a “memorandum of Sale”. This contains all the details the legal advisors need to open a up a file and send out initial forms to you to complete.

At the start of every purchase, if you are a new client we would need to obtain your identification documents, evidence for your source of funds, as well as various other pieces of information so that we can progress your matter accordingly. While we wait for this information back from you, we will also contact the Sellers conveyancer and let them know we are instructed and ask them to send us the contract documentation for your new home.

Once we have all this information back with us, we can then get to work considering the legal aspects of your purchase. We will raise any searches you require, ask questions on the legal title to the property and report to you throughout along the way.

While we are getting on with the legal work, you will be working alongside us to make arrangements for any survey you would like on the property, and to finalise any funding you require such as a mortgage or loan in order to complete the purchase.

Once we have all the answers back from the Sellers conveyancer, all your search results are back and any mortgage offer is in place and you have signed all the paperwork, we can then look to exchange contracts! Exchange is when the whole deal becomes legally binding and you are committed to buy, and the seller is committed to sell on the future “Completion date”. At this point the we hand over a deposit to secure the purchase.

In between exchange and completion we will be busy getting everything in place for the completion date. This includes drawing down any mortgage and ISA’s you may have and ensuring you have enough time to send us any balance funds.

On the completion day, we will then send all the money to the Sellers conveyancer. Once they receive this, they will then call us to confirm we have completed and the keys will be ready for you to collect at the estate agent and the hard work is then over to you!

We will still be assisting behind the scenes after this point while we register you as the new owner.

How we can help

At Wollens we have committed teams in each of our offices who will work closely with you and guide you through the process step by step. While it may seem a streamlined process to us, we know how daunting it can be and are on hand to help, each step of the way.