What conveyancing is actually doing while nothing appears to happen

This is written to be used rather than admired. Each section below is a decision about conveyancing, and each one has a default.

The work is sequential

Title is examined, searches are ordered, enquiries are raised on what those reveal, and replies are chased before a contract can be approved. Each stage depends on the previous one, so a delay early on propagates through everything after it.

This is why a transaction can appear to stall for weeks and then move in a day. A second track runs alongside it, since the lender is carrying out its own valuation, underwriting and issue of a formal offer, and a purchase can only reach commitment when both tracks have arrived — which is why a legal file that is entirely ready can still sit waiting.

Searches come from third parties

Local authority, drainage, environmental and mining searches are supplied by external bodies with their own queues. Turnaround varies dramatically by authority and is not something a solicitor can accelerate. Ordering them at the earliest possible moment is the only available lever, which is why instructing early matters.

Where an authority is badly backlogged, a personal or regulated search from a private firm is sometimes accepted as a substitute and is usually much faster, though whether a particular lender will take one varies, which makes it a question for the conveyancer rather than a decision to make on price.

Enquiries are where time goes

Anything unusual in the title — a right of way, a covenant, a missing building consent, a shared drain — generates enquiries. Replies often require the seller to find paperwork from years ago, and that is frequently the true bottleneck.

Sellers who assemble their documents before marketing shorten their own sale considerably. The documents most often missing are the same ones every time — building regulation completion certificates and planning consents for past work, guarantees for a damp course or a roof, the boiler service record, and any written agreement about a shared drain, boundary or right of access.

Common obstacles

Missing building regulation certificates for past work, unregistered land, absent freeholder on a leasehold flat, and indemnity policies used to bridge gaps. Indemnity insurance covers a risk rather than fixing it, and lenders vary in whether they accept it. None of these are unusual; all of them add weeks.

Indemnity policies carry a trap worth knowing about, since approaching the local authority or the neighbour about the very defect being insured typically invalidates the policy, which means the choice between insuring the risk and regularising the position has to be made deliberately and in that order rather than attempted both ways.

What you can actually do

Return every form the day it arrives, supply identification documents immediately, and answer questions in full rather than in instalments. Ask your solicitor for the current blocking item by name — a specific answer is available and a general one is not. Politeness with your own conveyancer is more productive than pressure, since they are usually waiting on someone else.

In practice, if you are the seller, the property information forms deserve far more care than they usually get, because careless answers about disputes, alterations or flooding can support a claim against you after completion in many jurisdictions, and not knowing is an acceptable answer where guessing is not.

None of this is a substitute for talking to a clinician if something feels wrong.

The money is the part fraud aims at

A property completion is among the largest payments most people ever make, and a well-established fraud involves intercepting email correspondence and sending revised bank details at the moment the funds are due. The defence is procedural rather than technical: take the account details through a channel agreed at the outset, verify any change by telephoning a number you already held rather than one supplied in the message, and send a token amount first where the firm allows it.

Many firms now refuse to accept new bank details by email at all for this reason, and a conveyancer who is relaxed about the question is a cause for concern rather than a convenience. Recovering money sent to a fraudster is difficult and depends heavily on the jurisdiction and on how fast it is reported, so the moment to ask how details will be confirmed is at instruction rather than on completion day.

The takeaway

Instruct early, return everything immediately, and ask what the specific blocking item is.

The version you keep doing is the version that works.