On friday I got home from work to find that the solicitor had sent through the final contract etc for signing. It turns out that way back in 1989 planning permission was sought for converting the house into a 1 bed flat and a 2 bed maisonette although there were some conditions to the planning application, as the conversion never took place I suspect the conditions were to do with parking as the house has double yellow lines directly outside so no parking there, plus the front garden is not big enough to turn into a driveway to get the car off the main road. Anyway we don’t want to convert so this isn’t a concern for us.
In the very impressive pack of information sent to us we had full details of the searches carried out on the property and although I have bought property before I have never seen such a full load of information before. We had to sign a stamp duty transfer form authorising the solicitor to pay the stamp duty (stamp duty land tax is payable on most properties over £120k and is 1% up to £250k although properties in some areas are stamp duty exempt the estate agent will certainly let you know if that is the case with the property you are interested in), the mortgage title deed, the contract and a buildings insurance form stating what insurance cover we have and who with and when it starts. The contract and title deed signatures had to be witnessed by a non family member. So over the weekend we got everything signed and then yesterday I organised the buildings insurance to start from this friday (well you can’t accuse me of not being optimistic!).
All being well we will exchange and complete this friday although I think this may be a little to quick for the solicitors to organise the transfer of funds etc so I expect it to next week that it actually happens….I can hardly wait 
The buildings insurance is always a little annoying because you have to pay for buildings and contents insurance before you even own the building! Anyway there is no way around this so although we could have started the insurance from next week and possibly avoided paying for a week of insurance on a property we don’t own we decided it was worth paying that to potentially get the house for this weekend. Fingers crossed now 
