A student emailed us in July with a question that comes up almost every cohort. She had just done a practice question where a house burned down three days after exchange of contracts, and the answer said the seller carried the risk. "But I learnt in Land Law that risk passes on exchange," she wrote."
Both are right, and that is exactly the sort of layered point Property Law and Practice loves to test in SQE1 FLK2. The common law rule does pass risk to the buyer at exchange. The Standard Conditions of Sale reverse it. The examiner's question is really: do you know which document is governing this transaction?
Property Law and Practice sits alongside Land Law, Trusts, Wills, Solicitor Accounts and Criminal Law and Practice in FLK2, and it is one of the most heavily procedural subjects on the whole assessment. That is good news. Procedure rewards candidates who build a timeline and hang everything off it, rather than trying to memorise 400 loose facts.
Build the Transaction Spine Before You Learn Anything Else
Draw five boxes on a page and you have the architecture of the whole subject:
Pre-contract — taking instructions, client care and money laundering checks, drafting or approving the contract, deducing and investigating title, searches and enquiries, arranging finance. Exchange — the contract becomes binding, the deposit is paid, completion date is fixed. Pre-completion — requisitions on title, engrossment and execution of the transfer, pre-completion searches, mortgage advance requested. Completion — money moves, keys released, the contract merges into the transfer. Post-completion — SDLT or Land Transaction Tax, discharge of the seller's mortgage, registration at HM Land Registry.
Now file every rule you meet into one of those boxes. An OS1 search? Pre-completion. A notice to complete? Completion. A 14-day tax deadline? Post-completion. In the exam you will typically be told a date and asked what should have happened by then, or what the solicitor got wrong. If your mental timeline is solid, the distractors become obvious.
Practical drill: take a blank sheet and reconstruct the five stages from memory in under three minutes, adding the key deadlines. Do it three times a week during your FLK2 revision. It takes almost no time and it is the single highest-return habit in this subject.
Deducing and Investigating Title: Registered and Unregistered
The seller's solicitor deduces title; the buyer's solicitor investigates it. For registered land under the Land Registration Act 2002, that means supplying official copies of the register and the title plan, plus copies of any documents referred to in the register. Read all three parts of the register properly: the property register (extent, easements benefiting the land), the proprietorship register (class of title, restrictions, indemnity covenants), and the charges register (mortgages, restrictive covenants, leases).
Unregistered land is thinner on the ground in practice but very much alive in the SQE1 specification. Here the seller supplies an epitome of title with a good root — a document at least fifteen years old under section 23 of the Law of Property Act 1969, dealing with the whole legal and equitable interest, describing the land adequately and casting no doubt on the title. A conveyance on sale is the classic good root; a legal mortgage can serve; a will or an assent generally will not do the job as well.
A point candidates keep dropping: the seller must disclose latent incumbrances and defects in title, but the physical condition of the property remains caveat emptor. If the buyer wants comfort on damp, drainage or Japanese knotweed, that comes from a survey and from replies to pre-contract enquiries — not from an implied promise by the seller. Where a reply to enquiries is false, you are into misrepresentation territory, not breach of the title obligation.
Exchange of Contracts: Deposit, Risk and the Standard Conditions
Back to our burnt-out house. Section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 requires the contract to be in writing, to incorporate all the expressly agreed terms in one document (or by reference), and to be signed by or on behalf of each party. Exchange is normally carried out by telephone using a Law Society formula, and the contract is binding from that moment.
Residential transactions usually incorporate the Standard Conditions of Sale; commercial ones the Standard Commercial Property Conditions. Under the Standard Conditions the seller retains the risk until completion, which reverses the common law position — but the buyer is still expected to insure, because a buyer with a mortgage will be required to by the lender, and because the seller's obligation is not the same as an indemnity. Learn the default: a 10% deposit, held by the seller's solicitor as stakeholder, and completion at 2pm on the contract completion date.
Then learn how the defaults get varied. Special conditions override standard conditions. A reduced deposit, a synchronised chain, a completion time brought forward to noon — all of these appear in SQE1 fact patterns precisely to see whether you read the special conditions before reciting the standard ones. Does the question tell you a special condition applies? Then that is your answer.
Pre-Completion Searches and the Priority Window
This is where SQE1 questions turn on numbers, so get the numbers right. For registered land, the buyer's solicitor applies for an OS1 search (whole of a title) or OS2 (part), which reveals entries made since the search-from date and confers a priority period of 30 working days. Complete and lodge the application to register within that window and the buyer's application takes priority over anything entered in the meantime.
For unregistered land, the search is against names at the Land Charges Department — form K15 — with its own shorter priority period. Where the buyer is taking a mortgage, the lender will also require a bankruptcy search against the borrower. If the buyer is a company, add a company search at Companies House to check for fixed and floating charges and to confirm the company still exists.
Notice the pattern: every pre-completion search exists to protect somebody from a change occurring between investigation of title and registration. If you can articulate the risk each search addresses, you will not need to memorise the forms in isolation.
Late Completion, Notices to Complete and Remedies
What happens when the buyer's funds do not arrive until the following Tuesday? Time is not of the essence in the ordinary conveyancing contract, so late completion is a breach but does not by itself entitle the innocent party to rescind. Under the Standard Conditions the defaulting party pays compensation at the contract rate on the balance of the purchase price for the period of delay.
To force the issue, a party who is ready, able and willing to complete may serve a notice to complete, giving ten working days (excluding the day of service) and making time of the essence. If the buyer then still fails to complete, the seller may rescind, forfeit the deposit, resell and claim damages; if the seller defaults, the buyer may rescind and recover the deposit with interest. Note the sequencing — no valid notice without readiness, no rescission without an expired notice.
On completion the contract merges into the transfer, so most contractual claims die at that point. That is why title problems must be raised as requisitions before completion, and why the exam rewards candidates who spot that a solicitor left it too late.
Post-Completion Deadlines and Leasehold Add-Ons
Two deadlines you should be able to recite in your sleep: the SDLT return and payment are due within 14 days of the effective date of the transaction in England (in Wales, Land Transaction Tax within 30 days), and an application for first registration must be made within two months under the Land Registration Act 2002. Registrable dispositions of registered land must be lodged inside the OS1 priority period. Leases granted for more than seven years are themselves registrable with their own title.
Leasehold work brings its own layer. For leases granted on or after 1 January 1996, the Landlord and Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995 releases the outgoing tenant on a lawful assignment, though the landlord will often require an authorised guarantee agreement. Where a lease says assignment requires the landlord's consent, section 19(1)(a) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 implies that consent must not be unreasonably withheld. Add the practical steps — licence to assign, notice to the landlord after completion, apportionment of rent and service charge — and you have covered most of what FLK2 asks about leasehold conveyancing.
" Half the distractors in this subject are correct statements of law attached to the wrong stage of the transaction.Three Things To Do This Week
Write out the five-stage timeline with every deadline attached, from memory, and check it against your notes. Then take ten practice MCQs on exchange and completion and, for each one you get wrong, write a single sentence explaining which stage you misplaced. Finally — and this genuinely matters — practise reading fact patterns for the words "special condition", "as agent", "unregistered" and "commercial", because each one flips a default rule.
Property Law and Practice is not a subject you can revise once and park. It is procedural memory, and procedural memory needs repetition spread over weeks.
How CELE SQE Can Help
We have been teaching SQE candidates at CELE SQE since the very first sitting in 2021, and our FLK2 materials work through the conveyancing timeline exactly as set out above, with worked transactions rather than abstract lists. Our SQE1 courses run at £3,720 (long-term), £2,750 (mid-term) and £1,750 (short-term), with a single-FLK option at half those prices if Property, Land and Trusts are your weak side; there is a £150 early bird discount, and the SQE1 question bank is available separately at £575 per month.com.