At MannBenham we focus on providing a fast, high quality professional conveyancing service.

Our team, which provides a full range of services including both domestic and commercial conveyancing, is Advocate led.

Before we undertake any work, we will agree a fixed fee with you, so that you know what you will be paying.

Our team will keep you fully informed of the progress we make on your sale or purchase and we provide our clients with our direct dial telephone and email contact details so that they can contact us with any queries you have throughout the process.

In order to progress your sale or purchase quickly and efficiently, we will correspond with the other parties in the sale or purchase on your behalf, for example the other party’s advocates, the estate agent and the bank if you require a mortgage. This allows us to advance the matter whilst at the same time reducing the stress of the sale or purchase for you.

Conveyancing Process

The conveyancing process on the Isle of Man is currently going through a period of change. Most of the land on the Isle of Man is not registered but since the 1st December 2009, all land transferred on the Island is to be registered with the Land Registry. This will not initially affect you as a purchaser or a seller if your land has not previously been registered.

As it stands, as most of the land on the Island is not registered, if you want to sell your property, you will currently usually provide your advocate with an Abstract of Title for the property. This is a bundle of all the documents relating to the property.

Once the purchase is complete, you will be provided with a document called an Office Copy of Title. This document will replace the Abstract of Title and will contain relevant information in relation to the title of the property. It is important that you keep this document in a safe place, as you will need to provide it to your advocate when the property is sold or dealt with at a future date.

Once you provide your advocate with either the Abstract of Title, for unregistered land, or the Office Copy of Title, for registered land, your advocate will conduct a number of searches on the property.

The next step in the process is to go through relevant documentation with you, for example the Agreement for Sale. This is the contract between you and the other party. The purchaser will pay a deposit when entering into contract with the seller. This is normally 10% of the sale price, but this amount can be negotiated. Once you enter into contract with the other party, you are obliged to complete the sale or purchase. If you are purchasing a property and you do not complete after entering into contract with the seller, the seller is entitled to keep the deposit the purchaser has already paid and could potentially bring a claim again against the purchaser for any loss the buyer has incurred. As such, it is important that you are sure you want to proceed with the purchase before you exchange contracts.

It is normal practice to insert a completion date for the sale or the purchase in the Agreement for Sale. With this date in mind, if you are obtaining a mortgage to help you purchase a property, we will normally ask you to come into our office so that we can explain the mortgage papers to you and have you sign the documents to obtain the money from the bank if you are happy to proceed. If you are selling a property, it may be that you still owe the bank a sum of money from the mortgage when you purchased the property, and need to pay this off with the sale monies. We will be able to organise this on your behalf too.

If you are purchasing a property, once we have the purchase monies in our account, we will be able to complete the purchase of the property on your behalf. Once we provide the seller’s advocate with the purchase monies, they will provide us with a Deed of Conveyance, if the land is unregistered, or the equivalent land registry form for registered land. If we are provided with the Deed of Conveyance, we will require you to sign this before we provide you with the keys to the property. The Deed will then be registered and we will provide you with the Office Copy of Title at a later date.

If you are selling a property, and the land is unregistered, we will require you to sign the Deed of Conveyance. Once this document is signed, and you provide us with the keys to the property, we will be in a position to complete. On completion, we will receive from the purchaser the money for the property. We can arrange with you how you want us to transfer this money to you, either by cheque or by electronic transfer. We will also arrange to pay any fees you owe, for example estate agent fees or legal fees.

It is common for a conveyance to take between 4-6 weeks to complete. This is a general guide and it may be that we can do it in a shorter time period or a longer time period, depending on your requirements and the individual property.

Should you wish to obtain a quote from us in assisting you in the sale or purchase of your property or discuss any aspect of conveyancing in the Isle of Man, please speak with one of our personal law team on (01624) 639350.

This guidance only provides a brief overview of the aspects of conveyancing in the Isle of Man. It should not be taken as providing legal advice or as providing a comprehensive guide. No person should act in reliance on any statement contained in this guide without first obtaining specific legal advice.