Almost all the stress in a house move comes from not knowing what happens next, or why nothing appears to be happening at all. The process has seven stages and most of the waiting occurs in one of them — which is worth knowing before you are in it.
The Seven Stages
1. Sale agreed through the auctioneer, with a booking deposit that is refundable and binds nobody. 2. Contracts issue from the seller’s solicitor with the title documents. 3. Investigation of title — requisitions raised, searches carried out, planning compliance checked. This is where the time goes and where problems surface, and it is the stage clients find most opaque because from the outside nothing visible is happening. 4. Mortgage finalised, lender’s conditions satisfied, and your solicitor gives the undertaking the bank requires. 5. Contracts signed and exchanged with the balance deposit — the point of commitment, and the point the uncertainty ends for both sides. 6. Closing, when funds transfer, keys are handed over and you take possession. 7. Stamping and registration with Tailte Éireann, which happens afterwards and quietly.
What Makes Kilkenny Transactions Take Longer
The law is national and identical everywhere. The property profile is not. A larger share of transactions here involve rural property, sites carved out of family land, farmland and older houses on unregistered title than would be typical in a city. In practice that means: folio maps that do not quite match what is on the ground; rights of way everybody has used for forty years and nobody ever documented; septic tanks and private wells with no paperwork; shared access lanes; and a substantial number of sales arising out of estates and family arrangements rather than open-market listings. None of that is exotic locally — it is the ordinary run of the work — but it does mean a Kilkenny transaction can take longer than an apartment purchase in a Dublin suburb, and it is far better to know that at the outset than to be told it at week eight. The corollary is the most useful advice on this page: if you are selling, assemble the file before you go to market. Title, planning certificates, Building Energy Rating, Local Property Tax, and whatever exists on the septic tank and access. A seller who has done that sells faster than one who has not, every time.
Not Sure What Stage You Are At?
Tell us the property, whether a sale is agreed, whether there is a mortgage and at what stage, and whether anything unusual is in the mix. That is enough to say what happens next.
Call 01 5827148