Buying a Home in 2026: How Conveyancing Works Now and What Is About to Change

The largest purchase most of us ever make

Buying a home remains the most significant transaction most families will ever undertake, and the machinery behind it, the conveyancing, has changed more in the past eighteen months than in the previous eighteen years. Stamp duty moved in April 2025, leasehold reform is under way, and in June 2026 the Government announced the most ambitious overhaul of the home buying process in a generation. This guide refreshes our earlier articles on conveyancing and explains, as matters stand today, how the process works, what it costs in tax, how long it truly takes, and what is coming next.

The process, step by step

Once you instruct a conveyancing solicitor, the work begins with identity and source of funds checks, now increasingly completed digitally. The seller's solicitor prepares the contract pack, and we then raise searches: the local authority search revealing planning decisions and enforcement matters, the drainage and water search, the environmental search, and in parts of Nottinghamshire a coal mining search. Enquiries follow, the mortgage offer arrives and is checked, and we report to you on everything before you commit.

Exchange of contracts is the moment the transaction becomes binding, at which point the deposit, usually ten per cent, is paid and neither side can withdraw without serious consequences. Completion follows on the agreed date, when the balance moves, the keys are released, and the property becomes yours. Two duties remain: the stamp duty land tax return must be filed and any tax paid within fourteen days of completion, and your ownership must be registered at HM Land Registry. Your solicitor deals with both.

What will the tax be?

Stamp duty land tax in England is charged in slices under the rates in force since 1 April 2025. Nothing is paid on the first £125,000, then 2% applies between £125,001 and £250,000, 5% between £250,001 and £925,000, 10% between £925,001 and £1.5 million, and 12% above that.

First time buyers are treated more generously: nothing on the first £300,000 and 5% between £300,001 and £500,000, provided the price does not exceed £500,000 and every buyer qualifies. Above that figure the relief disappears entirely. Anyone buying an additional property, including buy to let investors, pays a 5% surcharge on top of each band. The sums involved reward careful planning, and occasionally careful timing, so ask early rather than after the offer is accepted.

How long does it really take?

An honest answer serves you better than an optimistic one. A typical freehold purchase takes somewhere between twelve and sixteen weeks from instruction to completion, and leasehold transactions commonly take longer, because information must be obtained from landlords and managing agents whose speed varies enormously. The single greatest influence is the chain: a transaction moves at the pace of its slowest link.

You can shorten the journey at the margins. Instruct your solicitor when you begin viewing rather than when an offer is accepted, secure a mortgage decision in principle early, return paperwork promptly, and respond to enquiries the day they arrive rather than the week after. If you are buying leasehold, ask about ground rent, service charges and the management company at the outset. It is worth adding that leasehold law is itself being reformed, and the old rule requiring two years' ownership before claiming a lease extension has already been abolished, with further changes to follow.

The reforms announced in June 2026

In June 2026 the Government set out plans to redesign the home buying process itself. Sellers and their agents will in time be required to assemble an upfront pack of information about the property at the point of listing, covering matters such as condition, leasehold costs and chain position, so that buyers know the essentials before offering rather than three months afterwards. The proposals also contemplate binding conditional contracts far earlier in the transaction, with financial consequences for walking away without good reason, a new code of practice and qualifications for estate agents, and digital property logbooks with electronic identity checks throughout.

The ambition is to cut around four weeks from the average transaction and to halve the number of sales that collapse before exchange. But ambition is not yet law. Guidance and a code of practice are expected from late 2026, with the substantive legislation to follow over the coming years. Anyone buying or selling today should plan on the current rules, while welcoming what is on the horizon.

A word from experience

Conveyancing rewards preparation and punishes assumption. The transactions that complete smoothly are almost always those where the client asked questions early, disclosed everything, and instructed professionals who communicate. The fundamentals have not changed since our first guide on this subject: choose a solicitor you trust, understand each stage before you sign, and never treat exchange as a formality.

At Trent Law we handle residential purchases, sales and remortgages across Nottingham and far beyond, for first time buyers and seasoned investors alike. If a move is on your horizon this year, we would be delighted to make the legal side of it uneventful. Call us on 0333 3444 397 or write to info@trentlaw.co.uk.