The Estate Agent’s Dictionary

Like every area of life, estate agency has evolved its own particular specialist vocabulary and not just that “deceptively spacious” generally means small! There’s usually quite a lot of confusion about some of the terms so we thought we’d post a few explanations here to try and clear things up. Many of these are fairly self-explanatory but sometimes have a bit of nuance to them.

1. Cash Buyer: You are a cash buyer if you have all the money you need sitting in the bank waiting to be spent. However, if you’re buying with a mortgage and a cash deposit, but not selling a house, you’re not a cash buyer.
2. Proceedable/non-proceedable: A silly jargon word really, but if you’re not in a position to immediately proceed with the purchase of a house, you’re not proceedable, usually because your own house hasn’t sold.
3. Mortgage Agreed/Decision in Principle: When you apply for a mortgage nowadays, they will give you an agreement or a decision in principle as to how much you can borrow. This usually applies just to first time buyers but is quite a useful thing to have if your estate agent wants to know how proceedable you are or if you’re going to be able to afford the purchase.
4. Conveyancing: When you buy a property, there are quite a lot of legal documents that have to be filled in and completed, like the land registry documents and contracts. While you can do it yourself (which we definitely wouldn’t recommend!), normally you’d appoint a conveyancing solicitor, who specialise in this area, to “convey” you into the property, generally doing most of the legal stuff for you. Just a word of warning, their prices can vary wildly, so do shop around.
5. Chains: When you buy a home, the person you’re buying off may be buying another home, as will the next person and so on until someone who is selling a home doesn’t want to buy anything else. This is called a chain. Generally, they all complete on the same day as the money has to move gradually from one property to another. While they can be unwieldy, they’re not to be afraid of and chains of four or more are not uncommon.
6. Exchange and Completion: Generally the final two points of the sale; you “exchange” contracts with your buyer/seller legally tying you to buy their house. You “complete” when the money has been paid to the seller and you take possession of the home.

We hope this helps but do ask us about anything specific and maybe we’ll do a second entry for the dictionary in the future!