Buying a house and want to cut costs?
You could save £££s by handling your own conveyancing - our guide will get you started
As anyone who has bought a house knows, it's a pricey business, and it's not just about coughing up the asking price for bricks and mortar that stings - legal fees can really hit you where it hurts! So much so that more and more people are doing their own conveyancing - the process of transferring ownership from one person to another - and no, they aren't mad. People with absolutely no legal experience are taking on the solicitor's job, and saving themselves hundreds of pounds while they're at it.

what solicitors do

• Once you've had an offer accepted on a property, a solicitor will ask the vendor for basic information, such as which fixtures and fittings are included in the sale price, what services are supplied and if there are any maintenance agreements, as well as finding out about matters such as boundary disputes or rights of way over the land.
• While you sort out the survey and valuation report, the solicitor will organise local authority searches - they show if there are any planning schemes under way near the property, or any restrictions on the land. Depending on the area, searches from other bodies, such as local railway companies or coal boards, may be requested.
• If the searches and survey are alright, a contract of sale drawn up by the vendor's solicitor is sent to yours to approve. This is in two parts: Particulars of Sale and Conditions of Sale. The Particulars give a description of the property and details of the lease. The Conditions have information about the proposed completion date and any deposit required when contracts are exchanged.
• When the draft contract is approved by both sides, and mortgage arrangements finalised, the solicitors sign and exchange contracts and a deposit is lodged with the vendor's solicitor. On completion date, deeds are handed over and payment is made by legal tender or banker's draft.

doing the business

no legal eagle
'When I bought my last house I had time on my hands, so I decided to do some research and carry out the conveyancing myself,' says George Carter, 65, recently retired from a job with an electricity board. George has no legal experience, but did some swotting up from books found in his local library. 'When I told the estate agent I'd do my own conveyancing, he looked at me aghast,' says George. 'He clearly had no confidence in me, but I bluffed my way through. The vendor's solicitor just sent me back all the relevant documents and said, "Carry on". So I did!'

George followed standard conveyancing protocol - making enquiries about the house to the vendor, commissioning a structural survey and asking the local authority to do a search. 'Whenever I hit a snag I looked it up in the books,' he says. 'The best thing was being able to keep things moving - whenever I got a letter from the vendor's solicitor, I replied within a day, which I think took him by surprise. I felt in control all the way along, which was great. It was a bit of a challenge but I enjoyed it.' In fact he enjoyed it so much that he also did the conveyancing for his daughter Sarah, 21, and her boyfriend Glen, 22, when they put in an offer on a flat in Bournemouth. 'This time I speeded up the process even more,' he says. 'For example, I did the local authority searches myself at the council planning department. It only took me a couple of hours and cost £10. The first time, I paid £45 to get the searches done for me, and waited four weeks for the results.'

paper-pushing
Most people who do their own conveyancing don't find it nearly as daunting as they first thought. 'Essentially, it's paper-pushing, which is what solicitors charge a fortune to do,' says chartered surveyor Roger Sproston. 'They have all the documents on their PCs, and for each client they simply amend them by inserting the relevant details, then print them off. That's what you get charged for. A solicitor will bill you for every phone call and every minute of someone's time - they make a lot of money by getting their assistants to write letters and send out documents, while charging anything up to £90 an hour for their time. If you can do some of this basic stuff yourself, you'll go a long way towards cutting costs.'

If you do decide to go it alone, it may still be worth getting a solicitor involved at some stage of the process just to make sure you haven't missed anything or made a terrible mistake - this should cost you about £100 plus VAT. Mike Watson, 34, is a builder who did his own conveyancing when he bought a freehold house in Brighton. 'I realised I could save myself time and, more importantly, money,' he says. Because he had no legal experience, Mike paid a solicitor to check over everything he had done before the sale was finalised. 'He looked at the forms to make sure I'd done it all properly, and I felt it was worth paying for that to give me peace of mind. But I did all the legwork, and really enjoyed it. It didn't take up huge amounts of time, and although it seemed a little daunting before I started, the whole thing was painless. I'll definitely do it again next time I buy or sell a house.'

you can do it

• Much conveyancing work involves sending out standard forms and questionnaires. Get the forms from Oyez Straker legal stationers (020 7405 2020) or the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors bookshop (020 7222 7000). The Land Registry (020 7917 8888) has forms for registering ownership of a property.
• Freeholds are usually less complicated to buy than leaseholds, especially with regard to flats in large blocks. Check the terms of the lease carefully, making sure there's no confusion over the time the lease has left to run; ground rent and service charges; repair obligations; and any general restrictions, such as a ban on pets, or limited parking.
• Take nothing at face value. For example, if there's empty land behind the property, ask the local authority who owns it and whether anyone has applied for planning permission.
• Don't take the vendor's word for anything as people don't always disclose everything they know. Unearth as much information as possible, then check and double-check it.
• Many transactions are straightforward, but you need to know what to watch out for, so read up on conveyancing. A good layperson's guide is A Straightforward Guide to the Process of Conveyancing by Frances James (Straightforward Publishing, £8.99), available from the publishers via www.straightforwardco.co.uk, or from good bookshops.