You made the decision to sell your house, you’ve hidden everything that moves and decorated everything that doesn’t, you’ve shown lots of people around your home and you’ve just had a phone from your estate agent with news of an offer that made you shout ‘accept!’. If you’ve ever bought or sold a property, you’ll know that after the excitement of agreeing to a purchase or a sale, there is still a great deal of work to do before it is a done deal.
Exchanging and Concluding Missives
What follows is a period of negotiation called ‘exchanging missives’. This is a series of letters between your solicitor and the buyer’s solicitor agreeing and clarifying any number of issues. Only when missives are ‘concluded’ is there a legally enforceable contract between the buyer and the seller.
Not unreasonably, this is the point in the process where most people would say that, having ‘concluded missives’, their property has been sold.
But not quite – it depends on whether the missives (or contract) contains what are known as ‘Suspensive Conditions’.
Suspensive Conditions
A suspensive condition might be that the purchase of the property is dependent on the buyer selling their own property, or obtaining a satisfactory mortgage offer. Or it could be they want you to get retrospective planning permission for any alternations you’ve made while owning the property. If any of these suspensive conditions aren’t met, the buyer can effectively cancel the contract without any penalty.
To be or not to be (without suspensive conditions)
Given that missives are a negotiation of a contract, any suspensive condition has got to be acceptable to both parties. Whether you agree to a suspensive condition depends on how quickly you want to get to a position of having concluded missives. You might think having missives with agreed suspensive conditions gives you more peace of mind than delaying the conclusion of the missives for a longer period of time while the buyer works away in the background getting everything set up.
Attention to Detail and Great Service
It is, which is why conveyancing can only be undertaken by a solicitor. Buying and selling property, particularly if you are selling your own home, can be stressful. Having a good solicitor – on both sides of the sale – makes the transaction run smoothly and efficiently and gets you moving with as little stress as possible. At Wallace Quinn, we’ve had over thirty years of helping people buy and sell property and we’re here when you’re ready to take the next step on your property ladder. Get in touch if you’ve got any questions, no matter whether you’re ready to sell or just thinking about your options.