Ms Eleanor McKiernan:

It would very much depend on each property in each case. If we take the seller's legal pack, as part of the proposed process, before a property is put up for sale, a contract for sale has to be produced and all of the title documents have to be put into the pack, which will go to any buyer who is interested in the property. I presume any buyer looking at that will go to their solicitor and raise queries with the vendor's solicitors. That brings the sale into more of an auction scenario, which is a much higher cost base for any seller, but also for buyers because buyers will be asked to look at that contract before they even agree to bid on a property. The current position is that the minute the sale is agreed, the contract will issue. In our new guide, which we recently launched, we encourage and want people to let their solicitor know as soon as possible once a sale has been agreed. The first thing we do is request the title deeds from the bank because there can be delays of weeks receiving those. Once we get the deeds, we can start legals properly.