Conveyancer Guide to Selling Real Estate

When you are preparing to sell a property, you can expect to go through three phases with us: pre-sale actions, exchange of contracts, and sale completion. If you have any questions about any of these steps, please do not hesitate to contact us, or to look up definitions and full term explanations in our Real Estate Dictionary.

Phase 1

As a seller, you are required by Conveyancing Act to give details about the property you wish to sell. With your information and any information from the Land Titles Office, we will prepare this document for you.

We will incorporate these details into the Contract of sale, which we also prepare for you. If there is any information that might benefit you, we will be sure to advise you on those matters. Once the draft Contract is prepared, we will send it directly to you for your approval and with your approval we will forward a copy of the contract to the real estate agent to enable marketing of the property to commence.

Phase 2

The next step is to exchange contracts. The purchaser of your property will sign a copy of the Contract and give it to the vendor, who will give back a signed document confirming they have accepted the offer. This must always happen between the parties’ lawyers. In many situations, the estate agents and licensed conveyancers will become involved, but if complexities arise, there can be a problem as neither estate agents or licensed conveyancers have the training or resources to deal with complex exchanges.

Once the Contract has been signed and the vendor has accepted the offer, and the purchaser knows of the acceptance, we will review the Contract to make sure everything is acceptable and if any special conditions have been added. Once we are satisfied, we will continue the conveyance process and be sure that the property ownership is transferred properly.

Phase 3

The final step is to complete the sale. Our responsibility is to contact the purchaser of your property (or their representative), take care of all transfer of title documents, and manage any other details. We will also try to obtain early release of the deposit , but it can be difficult to get, so we encourage you to not depend upon a certain timeline.

If the property has a mortgage, we will also contact your bank and make arrangements to have the remainder of your loan paid and the property’s mortgage discharged. The settlement process will be performed between the purchaser’s representative, their lender, our office, and your lender. We will all gather on settlement day to exchange any last documents and cheques.

When the process is complete, we will pay the funds of the sale into an account for you or send you the money in the form of a bank cheque. We will also inform the relevant authorities that the transfer of property has been completed and that you are no longer the property owner.