When do you pay deposit?

house2109

Hi everyone, I was hoping you could help.
We are in the process of buying a house and have not as yet seen any contracts but we have paid solicitors fees, land registry fees etc.
The solicitors are asking for the full deposit? is this standard procedure? my online research shows that we have to pay deposit before exchange of contracts but I wasn't sure if we should be paying it before contracts have even been seen? It feels like the money could be earning interest in the Solicitors bank for a long time given that we have no clue of a move in/exchange date etc. thanks in advance!

Financialwizard

Are you FTB's? Or selling one to buy another?

What size deposit are you giving?

Edited to add: Normally it is 10% at Exchange of contracts to go up the chain and the remainder on day of completion.

Is it a new build?

elverson

Have your solicitors been in touch with the solicitor on the other side and have the searches come back yet?

house2109

We have the same solicitors as the seller which felt like a good idea as the time!
We're first time buyers but the people we're buying from are buying a new build part-ex so technically we're buying from the builders. We've had the house survey back but not the results of any of the searches, thanks!

flambo33

we're going through it at the minute. you have to pay your deposit before exchanging contracts however you could do it the day before, you don't have to do it months in advance. also for the deposit to the seller you only have to pay 10% regardless of the deposit you're paying for the mortgage (EG if the house is 100k you pay 10K to the solicitors but you could be putting 15k down, only give them the minimum 10k) We have a complicated purchase going on our selves and have had to hand over our deposit knowing that the completion is about 3 months away... they're gain on the interest, not ours unfortunately but you don't have to hand over the deposit until you're ready to exchange