_Five key steps to speed up the sale of your home

Sales that drag on for months can put you at massive financial risk because it is often harder to obtain a similar offer after an aborted sale. I often advise my clients to aim for an exchange of contract within 10 working days for a freehold and 21 working days for a leasehold property. If you are following the steps outlined below you should be in a perfect position to keep within these time-frames and avoid costly delays.

Five vital steps to speed up a sale: 

1. Instruct a solicitor prior to going on to the sales market 

• Solicitors are required to carry our anti-money laundering checks, so depending on your location this can lead to delays. 
• Instruct your solicitor and put them in funds from day one for any legal work they are due to carry out. 
• Consider ordering the searches. The buyer will not be able to proceed without these and the timeframe for getting these back from the local authority can waste time.

2. Choose the right solicitor by considering:

• Do they have the capacity, time and relevant experience to deal with the sale of one of your most valuable assets?  
• Have they dealt with similar properties previously?
• What is their expected timeframe for an exchange? 
• Do they work 5 days a week? 

3. Leasehold management pack:           

• Order your management pack from your block managing agents before you find a buyer. This will be an upfront cost but if you are committed to selling, you cannot get around the need for this information. 
• Your managing agent is a third party who is not incentivised to produce this information quickly, sadly we see if far too often that the pack takes weeks to arrive and then further enquires cause delays. 
• While you wait for this information, the buyer will be wondering what is going on. There is always a risk they could be out looking at other properties or changing their mind about the purchase. 

4. Share of freehold:

• Make sure your solicitor has a copy of your share certificate.  
• Although you have a share of freehold the lease is not irrelevant because it governs the relationship between the freeholders (group of lessees acting together) and the lessee (individual flat). 
• Make sure the lease length is long enough to not cause you an issue. Some mortgage lenders require 70 years as a minimum lease length, many of the big ones require 30 years plus the length of the mortgage - typically only 55 years.  
• Share of freeholders often don't lengthen their leases because either there are some legal costs (£1,000 roughly) involved or they think it can wait until it has to be done. Leaving this until it comes up during a conveyancing process means you suddenly have to pressurize the lessees to do this quickly and even if everyone does pull their weight is still likely you will still lose the buyer because they won’t want long third party delays.   

5. Have you qualified your buyer? 

• At the point of agreeing the sale, your agent should be obtaining proof of funds, which will be an initial sign of how serious the buyer is.  
• Confirm they have a solicitor instructed and ready to proceed. 
• Set realistic time frames for exchange

Roly Ingleby-MacKenzie is an Associate in Knight Frank’s Knightsbridge Office. The team is on hand to help with your property requirements; whether that's finding a buyer or tenant, a new home in the area, exploring ways to enhance the value of your property, or advising on the management and maintenance of your buildings and land.