Buying a House

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Buying a House

First, ensure that you have prepared a rough budget, to include the approximate price of the house, all professional fees (Solicitors, Surveyors, Valuers, etc.) together with any stamp duty payable (for details of the stamp duty rates, please click here ).
Once you have found the property you wish to buy, pay your booking deposit to the Auctioneer. This booking deposit simply holds the property for you, and is fully refundable if you decide not to proceed with the purchase make sure the Auctioneer is bonded.
The Seller will then instruct his Solicitor to issue contracts for the sale of the house to your Solicitors.
It is very important that you are fully committed to buy the house before you sign the contracts. Therefore, you should ensure that:-
We, as your Solicitors will then examine the contracts and the title documents to ensure that title to the house is in order.
Once all of the above have been dealt with, you then sign the contracts and pay the balance contract deposit. Typically, this is 10% of the overall purchase price, less the amount of the booking deposit you have already paid.
The Sellers then sign the contract which means there is now a binding contract in place. This means that the Seller has to sell the house to you, but equally, you are contractually obliged to buy the house from them.
The contracts contain a closing date, which is the date that has been agreed between both you and the Seller, upon which you will pay them the balance monies and in return for that, they will give you all title documents and the keys to the house.
Prior to that date, you need to ensure that your loan cheque will issue from the bank. This means complying with all their requirements, such as setting up a life policy, getting building insurance cover for the house, carrying out a valuation of the house, completing all the relevant paper work etc. It is vitally important that all those documents are in place with the bank as soon as possible, as without them, the bank will not release your cheque.
If it’s a case that you are not ready to buy the house on the agreed closing date, the Seller will be entitled to charge you penalty interest under the terms of the contract.
On the closing date, we, as your Solicitors meet with the Solicitors for the Sellers. We give them the balance purchase monies and they in turn give us the title documents.
Generally, the keys to the house are held by the Auctioneers and once we confirm to you that the house has been bought, you call to the Auctioneers to collect the keys.
As we are obliged to register the title documents and in particular the mortgage in favour of the bank, as soon as possible after purchase of the house, we require our fees, outlay and any stamp duty necessary, to be paid on the closing date.
After the closing date, you then need to call to see us to arrange to sign the deeds.
If there is any stamp duty payable, the deeds must be signed by you, and presented to the Revenue Commissioners, together with the relevant stamp duty, within 30 days of the closing date. If not, the Revenue will impose hefty penalties for the late payment of the stamp duty.
Once the deeds have been stamped by the Revenue, they are then lodged in the Land Registry or the Registry of Deeds, where your registration will be noted. This can take anything up to 12 months to complete depending on the title to the property.
Once the registration has completed, we then return your original title documents to the bank, (if you have a mortgage) or directly to you, if you finance the purchase from your own money.