Most of what buyers find distressing is the period between agreeing a sale and exchanging contracts, when a great deal is happening on the file and nothing whatever appears to be happening from the outside. Knowing what that stage consists of makes it considerably easier to sit through.
What Actually Happens After a Sale Is Agreed
Instruct a solicitor immediately — there is no advantage in waiting for contracts, and naming a solicitor at the point of sale agreed lets the auctioneer issue contracts straight away rather than chasing you for details, which quietly saves a week. Then your solicitor takes up the contract and title documents and begins the work you cannot see: investigating title to establish that the seller owns what they are selling and on what terms; raising requisitions, the formal set of questions every seller must answer; carrying out searches against the property and the parties; and checking planning compliance for anything built or altered. Meanwhile you should be doing the thing law does not do: getting a survey. An investigation of title is a documentary exercise and it will not tell you whether the roof is sound, whether there is damp, or whether the extension was built properly. Only a surveyor or engineer will, and on rural property an inspection of the septic tank is worth having as well. Buyers who skip the survey to save money are taking a risk out of all proportion to the saving.
Where Buyers Are Exposed, and What Comes After
Before exchange, your exposure is uncertainty rather than money: the booking deposit is refundable, and either side can walk. After exchange, that reverses entirely — the balance deposit is at risk and failing to complete carries consequences under the contract. So exchange is the point by which everything material must have been satisfied. The findings that genuinely should give a buyer pause: planning compliance that cannot be certified; access depending on a right of way nobody can evidence, which is common in rural Kilkenny; a boundary materially different from the folio map; an unresolved charge or judgment; a management company in poor order; incomplete deeds on unregistered title. Each should change the price, the contract or your mind. After closing, two quiet things: the deed is stamped, and your ownership is registered with Tailte Éireann, with the lender’s charge registered alongside where there is a mortgage. Registration timelines are Tailte Éireann’s rather than your solicitor’s, and a delay there affects neither your ownership nor your living in the house.
Sale Agreed, or Getting Close?
Send the property address, the auctioneer's details, your mortgage position and anything unusual you already know about. Naming a solicitor early is the cheapest week you will ever save.
Call 01 5827148