Conveyancing: Core Concepts, Traps and a Worked Example
The building blocks
Conveyancing is the legal transfer of an interest in land, and the exam tests whether you can sequence a transaction and spot where it breaks. You must be fluent in the distinction between exchange of contracts and completion: exchange creates a binding contract, fixes the completion date, and generally makes the buyer responsible for risk, while completion transfers the legal estate. Understand the difference between a contract for the sale of an unregistered title and a registered one, and know that title is investigated before exchange but that requisitions and searches must be raised in the right order. Learn the purpose of the standard pre-contract searches (local authority, drainage, environmental, chancel repair where relevant) and the rule that the buyer bears the risk of matters a proper search would reveal.
Traps to watch
Questions love to test the effect of a buyer's failure to search, the priority of registrable interests under the Land Registration Act 2002, and overreaching. Remember that a purchaser of a legal estate who pays capital money to at least two trustees overreaches beneficial interests behind a trust, so the buyer takes free of them even if they never consented. Another classic trap is the difference between a solicitor's undertaking and a contractual promise, and the timing of when a deposit becomes forfeitable. Watch for questions that conflate exchange with completion when allocating risk of damage.
Worked example
A buyer exchanges contracts, then the property is damaged by fire before completion. The general rule is that the buyer bears the risk from exchange, so the buyer must complete and cannot simply walk away, though insurance and standard conditions may modify this. Rule of thumb: after exchange, risk passes unless the contract says otherwise; before exchange, the seller carries it.