Unsure FTB question

[EH1903]

My husband and I are in the process of buying our first home and so far everything has gone okay. Offer accepted, mortgage approved, survey okay etc. etc..

We have been waiting for our solicitor to get the results of the searches back which he confirmed this morning he has now received. He emailed me to say that on the whole these are satisfactory for purposes and that they're just waiting for replies to the last of their enquiries and anticipate receiving these later this week , so hope to be able to report to us with the contracts for signature later this week.

My question is really what other information should we expect to receive as well as the contracts? Our solicitor has come highly recommended by a good family friend so I do trust that he'll do a thorough job, but I would still like to see the search results and information provided by the vendor (property information form and any responses to enquiries etc.), just so we can be sure we're 100% happy with everything. I wouldn't want to just receive and sign the contracts without having seen any of this, and so far we haven't had sight of any paperwork as it's all been dealt with by the solicitors.

Is it standard practice for the solicitor to share this information with us or do you think I need to specifically request it? Or am I mistaken about how this whole process should work? I'm really sorry if these are stupid/obvious questions but we haven't been through this process before so I thought I'd ask for some advice. Just really want to know what we should expect to receive and when.

He should do you a brief report on title. Ask him when you can expect to see this?

IIRC we got the results of the searches in the same envelope as the contracts to sign and return. It was a report into the flood risk, landfill location, all that kind of stuff. There was nothing unusual and we knew the area well so we knew everything that was likely to come up. I see to remember that we took the whole shebang over to a friend to witness the signatures and give the report a glance over.

We were invited to go and talk it through once they'd got everything back. More efficient to do it all at once.

solicitor should send you copies of all searches, with anything that may be an issue flagged up. That's what you pay them for.

you should also be sent the property information form so you can confirm that you are getting what you expect with the house.

phone up and ask when you will see all these.

you pay them. They therefore do what you want. (within the scope of the job!)

We are in the same situation and have received back the searches, contracts to sign, stamp duty form from HMRC and the total bill, inc. deposit, stamp duty and solicitors fees. It is a huge amount of info to wade through and I have been reading it since it came on Saturday.