Final report - exchange contracts?!

[Sarah452]

Hi, I’m in the process of buying a house. Solicitor has just emailed to confirm searches and enquiries are now complete and we will receive the ‘final report and paperwork’ on Monday to sign.

Does this effectively mean we are exchanging contracts on Monday? Excuse the ignorance !!

Not necessarily. That will depend on the status of the rest of the chain.

You need to have signed the contracts ready for when you do exchange.

No- it is hundreds of pages of waffle which you need to read

Can the solicitor summarise it for us and then let us know the red flags??

If we take a long time to read all these, that means we are slowing down the process. Is that right?

No it doesn’t mean that. The solicitor will get you to sign paperwork in advance of Exchange of contracts.

You will know when everyone in the chain is ready to Exchange because there will be conversations about what date suits everyone to actually move because that is agreed at the point you exchange contracts. And your solicitor will check with you that you are happy to proceed before contracts are exchanged because it’s legally binding.

You can phone your solicitor and ask them is there anything concerning in there? We had a meeting with our solicitor last time we moved to go over the paperwork we were signing but I don’t know if that always happens or not. Probably not as not everyone uses a local solicitor.

There is a summary but ours had every bit of paperwork attached- so the receipt for a 15 year old fridge etc

Unless you have specific problems reading then no you won't be slowing things down as everyone in a chain will have a similar thing to read and it's best read slowly and carefully