Garage purchased - a bit of advice needed please

[GluedToTheVideoMonitor]

We have been fortunate enough to have been in the right place at the right time this week, and yesterday we bought a garage on our housing estate (a garage to store a car, not one that sells petrol!). We have paid the vendor directly (private sale) and we now have the deeds.

What do we need to do next?

As a bit of background we live on an estate originally built for service-personnel in the 50s/60s, and there are four of these garages amongst some 40-ish properties so are much desired. The handwritten "for sale" sign up only went up on Monday and we acted quickly to secure it so there wasn't really chance to research beforehand.

I think we need a trip to a solicitor to get our names on the deeds but I'm not even sure how we ought to do this ie what type of solicitor we need to speak to.

Any help here would be great.

You need a conveyancing solicitor of course, but I reckon you already knew that. You don't own the garage. You've merely given a lot of money to someone who claims they own it.

[palm meets forehead]

Blimey collaborate, you were up early!

So hard to do midweek MOS, so damn easy at weekends!

Assuming that the person you gave the cash to is the legal owner, then you need to get a conveyancing solicitor to do at least a Land Registry search to check that they do, and to draw up a TR1 which the owner will sign, thereby transferring ownership to you.

There are a few other bits to do, but those are the basics.