Approach
How an enquiry is handled
Written first, agreed second. Nothing binds the company until it has said so in writing.
The sequence
From enquiry to completion
An enquiry is read against what the company is actually doing at the time. A property that suits the company one month may not suit it the next, and the honest answer to a good many enquiries is no. Where that is the answer, it is given plainly rather than left hanging.
Where the answer is yes, the company will set out in writing what it is willing to do and on what basis. That written note is the point at which the discussion becomes real. Before it, nothing said in conversation, by email or on this website commits the company to anything.
From there a purchase or a sale proceeds through solicitors in the ordinary way. Title, tenure, boundaries, planning history and condition are established through searches, enquiries and inspection — not through anything the company has said about the property in correspondence.
Before you write
What an enquiry should include
An enquiry about a property is easier to answer, and answered sooner, when it carries the basics:
- The full address of the property, with the postcode.
- The tenure — freehold or leasehold — and the title number if you have it.
- Who owns it, and in what capacity you are writing about it.
- Whether it is vacant, occupied, or subject to any existing arrangement.
- What the owner has in mind on price, and what is included in the sale.
- Anything already known about the condition of the building.
- Your name, and how you would like the reply sent.
If some of that is unknown, say so and send the enquiry anyway. An incomplete enquiry is better than none, provided the gaps are marked as gaps.
Why
In writing, every time
Property transactions turn on documents, and a recollection of a phone call is not a document. Everything the company agrees — price, timetable, what is included, who bears what cost — is confirmed in writing so that both sides are working from the same words.
The same discipline applies to availability. Whether a property is available, and on what terms, is confirmed in writing at the time of the enquiry and not before.