Documents to gather before your house sale completes

The call comes on a Tuesday afternoon. Your conveyancer needs the building regulations completion certificate for the rear extension, the one added by the previous owners in 2009, and exchange is scheduled for Friday. You are fairly certain the certificate exists. You are less certain where it is.

This is not an unusual position. Most house sales that stall in the final weeks do so not because of legal complexity but because of paperwork that was filed once and never retrieved. Knowing which documents to locate before you instruct a solicitor, rather than after, is one of the more practical things a vendor can do.

The documents your conveyancer will ask for

Title deeds are the starting point. If your property is registered with HM Land Registry, as the great majority now are, the register itself is the title, and your conveyancer can obtain official copies electronically. If the property is unregistered, the original paper deeds matter considerably more, and losing them creates genuine difficulty. Check whether yours are held by a lender, a solicitor who acted on a previous purchase, or in your own files.

Beyond title, a buyer's solicitor will raise enquiries that require supporting certificates. The most commonly requested include:

• Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). Legally required before marketing. If your EPC is more than ten years old, you will need a new one. The register at the government's EPC portal may already hold a valid certificate for your address.
• Building regulations completion certificates. Required for any structural work, electrical work notified under Part P, or alterations to heating systems. These are issued by the local authority or an approved inspector. If you cannot locate them, the local authority's building control department may hold copies, though a search takes time.
• FENSA or CERTASS certificates. Replacement windows and doors installed since April 2002 should have been registered with a competent person scheme. Certificates can often be re-issued by the installer or retrieved from the relevant scheme's online register if you have the original installation date and address.
• Planning permissions and listed building consents. Any extension, change of use, or material alteration will have required consent. The decision notice is the document to find.
• Guarantees and warranties. Damp-proofing guarantees, timber treatment warranties, new roof certificates, and structural warranties on newer builds are all transferable to a buyer and add tangible reassurance. Locate the originals and note the insurer or underwriter behind each one, the installer may have ceased trading, but the underlying policy may still be valid.

Fitted appliances occasionally carry their own warranties. A buyer may not require them, but handing over a neat folder on completion day reflects well and reduces the chance of a late query.

Insurance and timing

Buildings insurance is worth considering early, and from both sides of the transaction. As a vendor, your existing policy should remain in force until completion. Check that it covers the property in its current state, including any outbuildings or recent additions, and that you are not inadvertently in breach of a disclosure condition, some policies require notification of a property being placed on the market or left unoccupied during a lengthy sale.

As a buyer, buildings insurance should generally be in place from exchange of contracts, not completion. At exchange you become legally committed; if the property burns down between exchange and completion, the question of who bears the loss depends on the contract terms and your own cover. Your conveyancer will advise on the specific position, but arranging cover before exchange is prudent rather than premature.

Home contents insurance follows on completion day itself. If you are moving between properties on the same day, confirm with your insurer whether contents in transit are covered and whether cover at the new address attaches from the moment you take possession.

One category of insurance that is frequently overlooked in a property transaction is indemnity insurance. Where a certificate cannot be located and retrospective consent is impractical, a conveyancer will often suggest an indemnity policy to cover both parties against a future claim arising from the missing documentation. These are relatively straightforward to arrange and often inexpensive, but they are a substitute for evidence, not equivalent to it. A buyer's lender may have a view on whether they will accept such a policy, particularly on higher-value properties.

The practical advantage of having organised your documents before you instruct a solicitor is not merely speed. It is the difference between a buyer's solicitor raising an enquiry that you can answer within forty-eight hours and one that sits unresolved for a fortnight while exchange slips. In a chain, a single delayed response can move a completion date by weeks and, occasionally, cause a transaction to fail entirely.

A property file assembled calmly, deeds, certificates, warranties, planning notices, insurance schedules, is also useful long after the sale. It becomes the starting record for the next owner and, if you retain copies, the foundation of your own archive for any future transaction or tax calculation.

Glenvault is designed for exactly this kind of document, the kind that matters once every decade and is hardest to find when it does. Store yours at glenvault.com/signup.