Picture this. You are sitting the FLK2 paper, the clock is ticking, and a single best answer question drops a buyer in front of you who has just discovered the property sits next to a planned bypass. The vendor never mentioned it. What should the solicitor have done, and at which stage of the transaction? If your mind goes blank, you are not alone — Property Law and Practice is the subject where candidates know the land law theory but freeze on the procedure. This article walks through the conveyancing transaction the way the SQE1 examiners test it: as a sequence of decisions a real solicitor makes.
Why conveyancing procedure dominates SQE1 FLK2
Land Law gives you the substantive rules — estates, easements, co-ownership, registration of title. Property Law and Practice asks a harder, more practical question: what does the solicitor actually do with those rules, step by step, to move a sale from instruction to completion without negligence? The two subjects overlap heavily, so the examiners can build a question that looks like land law but is really testing procedure, or vice versa.
My advice to anyone working through FLK2 is to build a mental timeline of the transaction first, then hang the legal rules off it. Once you can picture the stages in order, the trickier points — when risk passes, when contracts become binding, who is liable for what — slot into place. Let us walk the timeline.
The pre-contract stage: investigating title and raising enquiries
Everything that protects the buyer happens before the contract is signed. This is where the bypass question above is won or lost. The buyer's solicitor must investigate title and carry out the standard investigations so that the client knows exactly what they are buying.
For registered land, the solicitor obtains official copies of the register and the title plan from HM Land Registry under the Land Registration Act 2002, and checks the property, proprietorship and charges registers. For unregistered land — still examinable — the solicitor examines an epitome of title and verifies an unbroken chain of ownership going back at least 15 years to a good root of title, then makes a Land Charges search against the names of estate owners.
Alongside title, the buyer's solicitor raises pre-contract searches and enquiries. The usual bundle includes a local authority search (which would reveal that planned bypass), a drainage and water search, an environmental search, and pre-contract enquiries of the seller, often on the standard Law Society forms. Remember the governing principle here:
Caveat emptor — let the buyer beware. The seller is generally not obliged to volunteer physical defects, so the buyer's solicitor must search and enquire. The seller must, however, disclose latent defects in title and must not actively misrepresent the property.
An SQE1 trap to watch: a vague reply to enquiries that turns out to be misleading can give the buyer a claim for misrepresentation. So when a question shows a seller giving a half-true answer, think about remedies, not just procedure.
Exchange of contracts: the point of no return
Until exchange, either party can walk away. At exchange of contracts the parties become legally bound to complete, and this is one of the most heavily tested moments in FLK2. A contract for the sale of land must comply with section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989: it must be in writing, contain all the expressly agreed terms, and be signed by or on behalf of both parties.
Contracts are usually exchanged using the Law Society formulae for exchange by telephone (Formula A, B or C), which set out exactly what the solicitors undertake to do. The buyer normally pays a deposit of 10% of the purchase price on exchange. Know the distinction the examiners love:
- A deposit held as stakeholder cannot be released to the seller until completion.
- A deposit held as agent for the seller can be passed on straight away, which is riskier for the buyer.
Risk in the property passes to the buyer on exchange, not on completion. That single rule explains why the buyer must have buildings insurance in place from the moment contracts are exchanged. If the house burns down the day after exchange, it is the buyer's problem — a fact pattern that appears again and again.
Standard conditions, usually the Standard Conditions of Sale or the Standard Commercial Property Conditions, fill the gaps between the special conditions the parties negotiate. If a party fails to complete, the other can serve a notice to complete, making time of the essence and opening the door to remedies including forfeiture of the deposit and, ultimately, rescission.
From exchange to completion: the pre-completion steps
The gap between exchange and completion is where the buyer's solicitor tidies up loose ends. Two pre-completion searches matter most.
For registered land, the solicitor carries out an OS1 priority search at HM Land Registry. This gives a priority period — currently 30 working days — during which the buyer can register the transaction free from any new entries on the register. Get the application in within that window and the buyer's interest takes priority. For unregistered land, a Land Charges search (form K15) does a similar job and gives its own protection period.
Where the purchase is funded by a mortgage, the lender's solicitor — often the same firm acting for the buyer — must also carry out a bankruptcy search (form K16) against the borrower to satisfy the lender. The solicitor then submits a certificate of title to the lender and draws down the mortgage advance ready for completion day.
Completion and post-completion: tax and registration
On completion the balance of the purchase price is paid, the seller hands over the transfer deed (a TR1 for the whole of a registered title), and the buyer becomes entitled to the property. The transfer must be by deed under section 52 of the Law of Property Act 1925 — a clear overlap point with your land law knowledge.
Completion is not the finish line. Two post-completion duties are squarely on the SQE1 syllabus, and both carry deadlines you should memorise as ranges rather than guessing exact figures:
Tax then registration. The buyer must submit a Stamp Duty Land Tax return and pay any SDLT due within the statutory window after completion. Only once SDLT is paid can the buyer apply to HM Land Registry to register the transfer and any new charge.
Two points the examiners test here. First, in Wales, SDLT does not apply — Land Transaction Tax is charged instead. A question that places the property in Cardiff is testing whether you spotted the difference. Second, registration is constitutive for many dealings: under the Land Registration Act 2002, a transfer of a registered estate does not operate at law until it is completed by registration. The buyer holds the equitable interest in the meantime, which is exactly why the priority search matters so much.
Leasehold and the practical points examiners reward
Buying a leasehold flat layers extra steps onto the same timeline. The buyer's solicitor reviews the lease for the term, the service charge and the ground rent, and raises enquiries of the landlord or managing agent. Where the lease requires the landlord's consent to assign, that consent must be obtained, and the landlord must not unreasonably withhold it. On a new lease of commercial premises, watch for security of tenure under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and whether the parties have contracted out of it.
Throughout the transaction, conduct sits in the background. A solicitor acting for both buyer and lender, or for joint buyers, must be alert to a conflict of interest under the SRA Standards and Regulations and must keep client money strictly in line with the SRA Accounts Rules — which ties Property Law and Practice neatly back to your Solicitor Accounts revision.
So how do you turn all of this into marks? Try these practical moves:
- Draw the timeline once, by hand: instruction → searches and enquiries → exchange → pre-completion searches → completion → SDLT → registration. Then test yourself on what happens at each node.
- For every fact pattern, ask which stage are we at? The right answer almost always turns on timing.
- Memorise the consequences of exchange — binding contract, deposit, risk passing, insurance — because that cluster is gold for the SBA format.
- Keep registered and unregistered procedures in separate mental columns so you never apply a Land Charges search to registered land.
Master the sequence and the questions stop feeling like memory tests and start feeling like the job you are training to do.
How CELE SQE can help
At CELE SQE (celebar.com) we have taught Property Law and Practice since the very first SQE sitting, and our materials map this whole conveyancing timeline to the kind of single best answer questions you will face. If you want structure, the SQE1 courses run from £1,750 for the short-term option up to £3,720 for the long-term course, with single-FLK pricing at half those rates if you only need FLK2, plus a £150 early-bird discount. Prefer to drill questions or read at your own pace? The SQE1 Question Bank is £575 a month and the full textbook set is £950. Reach us any time on WeChat SQE100 or at [email protected].