Selling a house by auction: The auction legal pack

Auction legal pack - information for property owners selling their property at auction. Selling at auction is straightforward, but it takes some preparation to get the best price. The auctioneer handles the marketing and viewings. The legal pack is a separate job, usually prepared by your solicitor, though some auctioneers will arrange it for you.

When selling a property at auction, preparation of the auction legal pack is key to ensuring a successful sale.

This article explains what an auction legal pack is, who's responsible for preparing it as well as providing estimates for the costs and timescales involved. This article is designed for property sellers but if you're considering buying at auction you might find it useful too.

Updated by Mark Grantham on 23rd August 2026

What is an auction legal pack?

In one sentence: the legal pack is the file of legal documents about your property, published before the auction, that lets every interested buyer do their homework and bid with confidence on the day.

When selling a property with an estate agent (private treaty sale) it's the responsibility of the buyer to make their own legal enquiries, to pay for searches and other legal documents relating to the property. But when selling at auction it doesn't make sense for the buyer(s) to do that work; there may be 20 or more prospective buyers interested in the property, and each one would have to apply for the same documents, pay for them separately, wait for them to come back and compile them into their own file. That's 20 people doing identical work when only one of them will end up buying. So the seller has it done once, and every buyer gets the benefit.

Once instructed, your solicitor will prepare the auction legal pack. The auctioneer will then publish it on their website so that prospective buyers can review it before the auction.

Having a complete legal pack ready well before the auction gives buyers time to review the property properly. Missing or incomplete information can create uncertainty and may discourage buyers from bidding.

Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Before bidding, they will want to understand as much as possible about the property. Known problems can often be assessed and allowed for. It is the unknowns that create uncertainty and may put buyers off, particularly if they feel important information is missing or being withheld.

A full and complete auction legal pack allows buyers to bid with confidence.

The legal pack is the contract, not just background reading

This is the part sellers most often miss. The legal pack is not a brochure or a courtesy. Two of the documents inside it, the general conditions of sale and the special conditions of sale, are the contract the property is sold on. And with an unconditional auction, the buyer is bound by those terms the moment the hammer falls, whether or not they have read them.

There is an upside and a responsibility here. It means the buyer cannot come back a week later asking for a reduction over something the pack disclosed. It also means the terms in your pack are the terms of your sale, so it's worth getting them right before the pack goes live rather than trying to change them a few days before the auction.

The practical consequence for sellers is simple. A gap in the pack does not protect you, it costs you money. Buyers do not walk away from problems they can measure, they walk away from problems they cannot. If your property has a known issue, the cheapest way to deal with it is to put the paperwork in the pack and let buyers price it properly.

Who prepares the auction legal pack?

The auction legal pack is usually prepared by the seller's solicitor. A seller can prepare it themselves, but very few do. Regular auction sellers, including property traders and asset management companies, almost always leave it to their solicitor.

There is a good reason for that. It keeps the legal work in one place, and the saving from preparing the pack yourself is small compared with the cost of getting something wrong. We take the same approach with our own sales. Even if you are familiar with the auction process, we recommend asking your solicitor to prepare the legal pack.

That does not mean you can leave everything to your solicitor. You will still need to complete some of the forms, provide information about the property and answer your solicitor's enquiries. It is therefore worth understanding what goes into the pack, what you will need to provide and the costs you are likely to face.

Three parties are involved, and it helps to be clear on which one does what.

Who does what - putting the legal pack together

Note what is not on that list. Marketing, viewings and the auction itself are the auctioneer's responsibility, and preparing the legal pack sits outside the commission they charge for that. Some auctioneers will arrange the pack on your behalf, and a number will do so with nothing to pay upfront, but the cost of it eventually falls to the seller either way.

Choosing a solicitor for an auction sale

Any conveyancing solicitor can prepare an auction legal pack, but auction sales work to strict deadlines and not every firm is set up to work at that speed. Before you instruct a solicitor, ask these four questions:

• Have you prepared auction legal packs before? Experience matters mostly for the special conditions, which is where an inexperienced firm tends to be slow or overly cautious.
• Can you have the pack ready by the auctioneer's deadline? Get the date in writing. A firm quoting six weeks for a routine freehold is not the right firm for a sale four weeks away.
• What will it cost, all in? Ask for a quote that separates the cost of compiling the pack from the cost of the sale itself.
• Will you deal with the auctioneer directly? Most auctioneers have a portal for uploading the pack and answering buyers' legal enquiries in the run-up to auction day.

If you don't have a solicitor, the auctioneer selling your property will usually be able to recommend one who does auction work regularly. You can also search the Law Society directory.

What's included in the auction legal pack?

The contents of the auction legal pack will depend on the property you are selling. For a registered property, the starting point is usually the official copy of the title register and the title plan held by HM Land Registry. Your solicitor can obtain these through HM Land Registry's professional portal. The current fee is £7 for each official copy.

The title register is an important part of the pack. It identifies the registered owner and sets out the matters affecting the title. These can include mortgages and other charges, restrictive covenants, rights of way and other rights or obligations affecting the property. Sometimes the register refers to a separate deed or document containing further details. If HM Land Registry has a copy of that document, your solicitor can obtain it and include it in the legal pack where relevant.

The title plan shows the general extent of the registered property, usually edged in red. It does not fix the exact legal boundary, as HM Land Registry title plans normally show general boundaries only.

What if you've lost the deeds, the lease or the paperwork?

This is one of the most common worries sellers raise with us, and it comes up most often on inherited properties, where nobody is quite sure which legal documents were kept or where they are now. For the great majority of sellers, lost or missing documents turn out not to be a problem at all.

If your property is registered, and almost all property in England and Wales now is, you do not need the physical paperwork. HM Land Registry holds the record of ownership, and the register and title plan together are what count as the title deeds today. Your solicitor downloads official copies in a few minutes for £7 each. It is worth knowing that the Land Registry does not hold the original paper deeds either, and does not need to: once a property is registered those old documents carry no legal force, which is why many solicitors stopped storing them years ago. HM Land Registry's own guidance on where your title deeds are and whether you need them explains the position in full.

In the case of a leasehold flat, a missing lease is usually the same story. Where a leasehold title is registered, a copy of the lease is normally filed at the Land Registry, and your solicitor can obtain an official copy in the same way and for the same fee. Our guide to selling a flat with a lost or missing lease covers the cases where it is not that simple.

The position is different for an unregistered property. A small number of older properties are still unregistered, typically ones that have not changed hands for decades. There is no title register at all, so your solicitor assembles the original deeds and prepares an epitome of title instead, which takes longer and costs more. If those deeds cannot be found either, the property has to go through first registration, supported by a statement of truth setting out the ownership history and how the deeds came to be lost. That commonly results in possessory rather than absolute title, usually needs an indemnity policy alongside it, and is specialist work. It is also slow. HM Land Registry completes about half of all first registration applications in around 8 months, and almost all within 12 to 14 months, although your solicitor can ask for an application to be expedited where a sale depends on it. Raise it with your solicitor at the very start if you know the property has never been registered.

The only form filling required by the seller will be for the property information questionnaire (the Law Society TA6 form) and fixtures and fittings form (the TA10), plus the leasehold information form (the TA7) in the case of a leasehold flat. These forms will be sent to you by your solicitor and they shouldn't take much longer than 20 to 30 minutes to complete. It can sometimes be the case that sellers are unable to complete these forms because they don't know anything about the property. For example, in the case of an inherited property the executors might not know about things like who supplies the electricity, gas or water to the property, or exactly where the property boundaries are. So rather than completing these forms it's quite okay to state that the property is "sold as seen" and it can be helpful to explain why the forms are missing, in the case of an inherited/probate sale this can be done by including the grant of probate in the legal pack.

Prospective buyers will also be interested to see what's happening locally in terms of new building and transport developments etc. This information is available from the local authority search which your solicitor will either obtain directly from the local council or through a specialist search provider. The fee varies more than for any other search, from around £75 to over £300 depending on the council. This document is often considered essential to a legal pack, especially for rural properties where the prospect of a new housing development or airport would seriously affect the value of the property. If the local authority search is not in the legal pack prospective buyers might assume the seller has something to hide.

There are several other searches that may be included in the legal pack. One of the most common is the drainage and water search, known as the CON29DW, which usually costs between £45 and £100. This confirms whether the property is connected to mains water and the public sewer, and provides information about water and sewerage pipes in and around the property. It can also highlight issues such as low water pressure and the risk of internal flooding caused by overloaded public sewers. The search reports flooding recorded by the water company, rather than the wider risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water. Those broader risks are normally considered as part of an environmental search.

An environmental search is the third one buyers expect to see. It draws on ground data to report contaminated land, landfill, ground stability, radon and flood risk, and it is inexpensive and quick to obtain. A clean environmental report removes a whole category of worry from a bidder's mind for well under £100.

Other searches depend on the property's geographical location. Your solicitor will know which apply, but they are worth knowing about, as they can add to both the cost and the wait:

• Coal mining search for properties in former coalfield areas, covering much of the North East, Yorkshire, the Midlands, South Wales and parts of Scotland.
• Tin, clay and other mining searches in Cornwall, Devon and a handful of other counties.
• Chancel repair liability search, relevant to properties on land historically tied to a parish church.
• Brine, limestone or gypsum searches in specific areas such as Cheshire and the West Midlands.
• Major infrastructure searches where a scheme such as HS2 or a Crossrail route passes nearby.

Another essential part of the auction legal pack is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). It's a legal requirement to have an EPC whenever a property is advertised for sale or rent. In practice that means the EPC must be commissioned before marketing begins and be available within 28 days of the property going on the market. For an average sized house or flat an EPC costs somewhere between £50 and £120 and can be obtained very quickly, usually within several days. EPC's are valid for 10 years, so it may well be that you have a valid EPC for your property already - if you bought or have tried to sell the property within the last 10 years. You can check for yourself by visiting the government's Find an energy certificate service.

All property auctions are governed by a standard set of conditions, known as the general conditions of sale, or the standard auction contract. These conditions are available from the auctioneers website and published in the auction catalogue too. The conditions state the auctioneers role and the conduct of the auction, and they also layout the terms of the transactions, for example the deposit will be 10% of the purchase price and that completion will be 28 days after auction day. In addition to the standard conditions your solicitor will need to include a document known as the special conditions.

Most UK auctioneers use the Common Auction Conditions published by RICS, currently the fifth edition, which sit inside the RICS professional standard Auctioneers selling real estate. Under those conditions the completion date is 20 business days after the contract date unless the special conditions say otherwise, which is where the familiar "28 days to completion" comes from. A few auction houses use their own conditions instead, so it is always worth checking which set applies to your sale.

The special conditions state the lot number, the address of the property and the seller's solicitors contact details. The special conditions also state variations to the common conditions, for example if you wanted to change the completion date from 28 days to 36 days, then a clause in the special conditions will allow for that. It's also become quite common for regular auction sellers (e.g. property dealers and asset management companies) to recover some of their auction and legal costs by adding a clause to state that the buyer will pay an additional 1% towards the seller's fees.

The special conditions are the part of the pack you have most control over, and the part experienced buyers read first. Typical variations include a longer or shorter completion period, a reduced deposit, a contribution towards the seller's costs, the sale being subject to an existing tenancy, and any VAT position on a commercial lot. Our page on passing your sale costs to the buyer explains how the cost contribution clause works in practice, and why it is best settled before the pack goes live rather than added a few days before the auction.

Certificates, guarantees and indemnity policies

These are the documents sellers most often forget, and they are usually free. Anything that proves work was done properly belongs in the pack:

• Building regulations completion certificates and planning approvals for extensions, loft conversions and structural alterations.
• FENSA or CERTASS certificates for replacement windows and doors.
• Electrical certificates such as a Part P certificate or a recent EICR, and the Gas Safe certificate for the boiler.
• Guarantees for damp proofing, timber and woodworm treatment, underpinning, roofing, cavity wall insulation or a new boiler, along with the transfer paperwork where a guarantee can be passed on.
• NHBC or other structural warranty documents on a newer property.
• Indemnity policies already in place, for example for missing building regulations, a breach of a restrictive covenant, a lack of planning consent or an absent landlord.

Where a certificate is genuinely missing, an indemnity policy is often the quick and cheap answer. They typically cost between £20 and a few hundred pounds depending on the property value and the risk covered, and putting one in the pack is far cheaper than watching bidders discount for a problem you could have insured against. Your solicitor will advise which are worth taking out.

There are other documents that need to be included in the auction legal pack, depending on the type of property you are selling.

For tenanted properties, prospective buyers will want to see a copy of the tenancy agreement and as many associated landlord and tenant documents as possible e.g. gas safety certificate, deposit statement etc. If you are unable to include a tenancy agreement in the legal pack, either because you can't find it or you didn't have one in the first place, you will still be able to sell at auction, but the absence of a tenancy agreement will usually result in fewer prospective buyers and a lower sale price, as the buyer cannot see the terms of the tenancy they would be taking on. In the absence of a tenancy agreement it can be useful to include rent/bank statements or a copy of a rent book to show that rental income is being received.

If you're selling a leasehold property you will need to include a TA7 (leasehold information form) and a management information pack. Whether you sell your property through an estate agent, at auction or direct, it's the sellers responsibility to apply for the management information pack. These are obtained from the management company which works on behalf of the freeholder. The management information pack includes financial statements to show if service charges are all up-to-date, insurance policy documents, fire safety certificates and other compliance documents to show the property is being properly managed.

The management pack can take a few weeks to arrive, so it's important to request as soon as possible. Most solicitors will ask the seller to request these directly from the management company themselves. Contact details for the management company can usually be found on your service charge or ground rent statement. The cost of the management pack is usually £200 to £500, and sometimes more.

In the event of any problems or delay in obtaining the management information pack, a useful resource is the Leasehold Advisory Service.

For properties with a shorter lease it was once standard advice to serve a Section 42 notice on the freeholder before selling, so that the benefit of the notice could be assigned to the buyer. That advice has changed. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 abolished the requirement to have owned the property for two years before extending a lease, with effect from 31st January 2025, so a buyer can now start a lease extension straight after completion rather than waiting. For most sellers that removes the main reason to serve notice themselves.

There are still cases where it is worth considering. The clearest is a lease sitting just above 80 years. Marriage value becomes payable once a lease drops below 80 years, which raises the premium sharply, and the valuation date is fixed by the date the notice is served. Serving before the lease crosses that line can therefore save a substantial sum and is a genuine selling point. On a very short lease the case is weaker, since marriage value already applies, though a notice in place can reassure buyers who are wary of the extension process.

Serving notice is not free or instant. You would pay your own valuation and legal costs as well as the freeholder's reasonable costs, the process takes time that an auction timetable may not allow, and the benefit of the notice has to be properly assigned to the buyer in the contract. It is worth taking advice from a solicitor or valuer who specialises in lease extensions before deciding either way. Our guide to selling a short lease flat covers the position in more detail.

Properties with potential, including those with planning permission sell particularly well at auction. If you have current or even lapsed planning permission, then it's important to include all related documentation in the legal pack. That means the decision notice, the approved drawings and any conditions attached to the consent. Where planning has lapsed, include it anyway. Lapsed consent still tells a developer what the council was previously willing to approve, and that is worth real money in the bidding.

If you are selling an inherited or probate property, the pack should include the grant of probate or letters of administration, which is the document proving the executors have authority to sell. If the grant has not yet been issued, a property can still be marketed and entered into an auction, but the sale cannot complete without it, so tell the auctioneer and your solicitor early and the completion date can be set to allow for it. Our guides on selling a probate property and selling before probate is granted cover this in more detail. Where a sale is being handled under a power of attorney, the power of attorney document needs to go in the pack too.

Extra documents by property type

The core pack is much the same for every property. What changes is what goes in on top. This table summarises the extras buyers will expect to see, depending on what you are selling.

Additional legal pack documents by property type

None of this is a checklist you have to complete. You can only include documents that exist, and a great many sellers come to auction precisely because they do not have them. A knotweed survey, an engineer's report or a folder of guarantees may simply never have been commissioned, and their absence does not stop a property selling.

What matters is that the pack is open with buyers about the position, and clear about where things stand. Where a document does not exist, it is better to say so than to leave an unexplained gap that leaves buyers guessing.

If your property does not fit neatly into any of these, the test is straightforward: if a careful buyer would want to see the document before committing their money, and you have it, it belongs in the pack.

What's not included in the auction legal pack

In terms of what should not be included in the legal pack, as the name suggests the pack is for legal documents and nothing else. There is no need to include surveys or marketing materials in the auction legal pack. Specifically, four things sellers sometimes ask about do not belong there:

• A survey. The survey is the buyer's responsibility, not yours. Many auction buyers are cash buyers who won't commission one at all, and any buyer who does want a survey needs to have it done and read before they bid. Our costs page covers who pays for the survey in more detail.
• Marketing material and photographs. The catalogue entry, floorplan and photographs are the auctioneer's job and sit alongside the pack, not inside it.
• A valuation or the reserve price. The reserve stays confidential between you and the auctioneer. It is not disclosed in the pack, and it is not the same thing as the guide price. Our page on auction reserve prices explains the difference.
• Your mortgage redemption figure. Your solicitor needs it to complete the sale, but it is a matter between you, your lender and your solicitor. It does not go in the pack.

Cost of the auction legal pack

Legal packs can cost anything from £200 to £500 for a freehold property, depending on the type of property being sold and the number of documents you include. For a leasehold flat, expect £500 to £1,000, because the management information pack from the freeholder or managing agent is a significant extra cost on its own.

The two figures that move the total most are the council's search fee, which varies enormously from one local authority to the next, and the managing agent's charge on a leasehold flat. The table below sets out what each item typically costs and how long it takes to come back.

Typical auction legal pack costs and turnaround times

Search fees are disbursements, so your solicitor passes them on at cost. VAT applies to your solicitor's own fee. Figures are typical UK ranges as at August 2026 and are a guide only, so always ask your solicitor for a written quote.

Four things worth knowing about the cost

It is not always an extra cost at all. If you have already been through an estate agency sale that fell through, your solicitor can often reuse the documents they prepared at the time, so there may be little or nothing extra to pay. The searches are the exception, since in an estate agency sale those are commissioned by the buyer, so they will still need ordering. Our page on what to do when a house sale has fallen through covers the wider position.

You can pass the cost to the buyer. Your solicitor can add a clause to the special conditions requiring the buyer to pay a contribution towards your legal and auction costs. This is standard practice among regular auction sellers. Some buyers will bid a little lower when they spot it, others will not be put off at all.

Some auctioneers will arrange the legal pack with no upfront cost. Payment is deducted or settled once the property successfully sells, so you pay nothing before auction day.

The money is not wasted if the property doesn't sell. The pack stays valid for around 6 months, so a lot that fails to reach its reserve price can go into the next auction with the same pack. See what happens if your house doesn't sell at auction.

For the full picture on auction selling costs, including commission and entry fees, see our guide to costs for selling at auction.

Auction Valuation

How long does it take to prepare an auction legal pack?

For a freehold property, an auction legal pack can be prepared in anything from 1 week to 3 weeks. The local authority search is usually the delaying factor. What catches sellers out is how much that varies. Some councils turn a search around in 48 hours. Others are measured in months, and research published in May 2026 put Bracknell Forest at an average of 92 working days, with Camden, Merton and Rochdale all around 52 working days and Tonbridge and Malling at 47. The government's own target is 10 working days.

Why search times move around

Solicitors will tell you that searches are coming back quickly at the moment, or that they are taking longer than usual, and both can be true within a few months of each other for the same council. Three things drive it.

How busy the market is. Council land charges teams are small and staffed for an average workload, not a peak one. When transaction volumes rise, whether that is a spring surge or a rush to beat a stamp duty deadline, requests arrive faster than the team can clear them and the queue lengthens. When the market is quiet, the same team works through the backlog and searches come back quickly. Seasonal demand levels and local authority staffing levels are two of the reasons most often given for the variation, and it is why your solicitor's read on current turnaround is worth asking for.

Staffing. These are not big departments. There is a recognised national shortage of experienced conveyancing and land charges staff, and in a small district council one person on long-term sick leave is enough to double the wait on its own.

IT failures and cyber attacks. A council that cannot get into its own land charges register cannot produce a search at all, and this has happened repeatedly:

• Copeland Borough Council, August 2017. A ransomware attack over the bank holiday weekend, with restricted access to land charges halting house sales in the area.
• Hackney, October 2020. The council was unable to process land searches for months. Purchases in the borough collapsed, and the council advised affected buyers to speak to their lender about indemnity insurance.
• Gloucester City Council, December 2021. LLC1 and CON29 searches could not be processed and were held in a queue until the systems were restored the following year.
• Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham, November 2025. One attack on shared IT systems took out all three boroughs at once. Searches were disrupted for months, with Kensington and Chelsea only resuming processing in March 2026 and a significant backlog running beyond that.

If your property is in an area where the council cannot deliver, talk to your solicitor about a personal search. A private search company compiles the same information from the public registers, it is usually much quicker, and a search from a firm working to the Search Code is normally backed by an indemnity policy. Cash buyers, who make up a large share of the auction room, are generally comfortable with one. A buyer using a mortgage or bridging finance needs their lender to accept it, and not every lender does, so make it clear in the pack which type of search you have provided.

For leasehold properties, the delaying factor is usually the management information pack (obtained from the managing agents or the freeholder) which often takes longer than it should, just because many freeholders aren't used to preparing. It's worth chasing your freeholder (or their managing agent) to make sure they're dealing with your request. Allow 3 to 6 weeks in total for a leasehold pack, and request the management pack the day you decide to sell rather than waiting for your solicitor to ask for it.

The legal pack timeline, counting back from auction day

Here is how the preparation fits around a typical on-the-day auction for a well organised seller who does not want to leave anything to chance. It is not a minimum, and plenty of sellers move faster than this, as our guide to how long it takes to sell a house at auction explains. The dates are approximate and your auctioneer will confirm their own deadlines.

1. 5 to 6 weeks beforeYou decide to sell. Instruct the auctioneer and your solicitor at the same time, not one after the other.
2. 4 to 5 weeks beforeYour solicitor downloads the Land Registry documents and orders the searches. You complete the property information and fittings forms, and request the management pack if you are selling a flat.
3. 3 to 4 weeks beforeThe catalogue goes live and marketing and viewings begin. Buyers start asking whether the legal pack is available.
4. 2 weeks beforeSearches come back. Your solicitor drafts the special conditions and assembles the pack, then sends it to the auctioneer to publish.
5. 1 week beforeBuyers and their solicitors review the pack. Legal enquiries come in through the auctioneer and your solicitor answers them.
6. 1 to 3 days beforeAny late document or amendment is published as an addendum to the pack.
7. Auction dayThe auctioneer announces any addendum, the hammer falls and contracts are exchanged.
8. 28 days laterCompletion, and you receive the money.

The key part of the timeline is the period between the legal pack being published and auction day. Buyers need enough time to review the pack, take legal advice and arrange their finances. If the pack is available a week or more before auction day, they have time to do that work properly, and without being rushed. If it only appears a day or two beforehand, some buyers may simply decide not to bid.

Your first real sign of buyer interest

One of the most exciting numbers to watch before auction day is the number of people requesting or downloading the legal pack.

Buyers normally have to register their details to access the pack. If it has not yet been published, they may be able to request it and receive a notification when it becomes available. This gives the auctioneer a useful picture of how much serious interest your property is attracting, and they should keep you updated.

For a seller, this is one of the first tangible signs that buyers are doing more than simply looking at the advert. They are taking the next step and investigating the property in more detail.

As a rough guide, one or two requests can feel disappointing. Five to ten suggests a healthy level of interest, while 20 or more can be very encouraging and may point towards competitive bidding on auction day.

The number is useful when interest is low too. If very few buyers have requested the pack with only a week to go, speak to your auctioneer. It may be time to review the reserve or look at what else can be done to encourage bidding.

And if plenty of buyers are waiting for a legal pack that has still not been published, that is a clear reason to chase your solicitor. You do not want interested buyers losing momentum because the information they need is not available.

What slows a legal pack down

• The local authority search. Turnaround varies from a couple of days to several months depending on the council, how busy the market is and whether their systems are working.
• The managing agent or freeholder. The single most common cause of delay on a flat, and largely outside your solicitor's control.
• A missing lease or missing deeds. Replacements can be obtained but it takes time. See selling a flat with a lost or missing lease.
• An unregistered title. Assembling the deeds and preparing an epitome of title adds a week or more.
• Probate not yet granted. The sale can still be marketed, but completion cannot happen without the grant.
• The seller. Forms sitting on the kitchen table for a fortnight is a genuinely common cause of delay, and the easiest one to fix.

Seller's legal pack checklist

A common cause of delay when preparing a legal pack is simply tracking down documents. You can save valuable time by gathering what you already have before instructing your solicitor. Not everything on this list will apply to your property.

• The file from when you bought the property. This can be a useful starting point, as it may contain old title papers, searches, property forms, guarantees and certificates.
• Your lease, if you are selling a leasehold property, together with any deeds of variation. If you own a share of the freehold, find the share certificate too.
• Service charge and ground rent paperwork, together with contact details for the freeholder, managing agent or management company.
• Tenancy paperwork, if the property is let. This might include the tenancy agreement, deposit protection information, gas safety records, electrical inspection reports and rent records, where applicable. Landlords have a number of safety and deposit obligations, although the precise requirements depend on the tenancy and where the property is located.
• Planning and building regulations paperwork for alterations or extensions, including approvals, completion certificates and any drawings you still have. These documents can be important when the property is sold.
• Certificates and guarantees for work carried out at the property, such as replacement windows, electrical work, a new boiler, damp treatment, roofing, underpinning or a new-build warranty such as NHBC. FENSA certificates, for example, can provide evidence that replacement windows complied with Building Regulations.
• Any indemnity insurance policies taken out when you bought the property or during your ownership.
• Probate or power of attorney documents, where relevant. For an inherited property this may include the grant of probate or letters of administration. If someone is selling on behalf of the owner, your solicitor will need details of the relevant power of attorney.
• Your EPC. You can check whether the property already has a valid Energy Performance Certificate and download it free from the government's Find an energy certificate service. An EPC is normally valid for 10 years and, where one is required, should be ordered before the property is marketed.

Two more things your solicitor will need from you, although neither goes into the legal pack itself:

• Your mortgage details, if there is a mortgage secured against the property, including the lender and mortgage account number. Your solicitor will need these to deal with repayment of the mortgage on completion.
• Identification for each seller. Your solicitor will need to verify your identity before acting for you. They may ask for a passport or driving licence, proof of address and other information depending on the checks they carry out.

If some of these documents have gone missing, don't panic. That is common, particularly with properties that have been owned for many years or are being sold following a death. Give your solicitor everything you have and tell them what is missing. They can then work out what needs replacing, what can be obtained elsewhere and what can be dealt with another way.

What if the auction legal pack is not ready in time for the auction?

Most auctioneers will allow a property to be entered in to auction with the bare minimum in the legal pack; that will typically be the official copies of the title register and title plan, and the special conditions of sale. But other auctioneers will include in their terms the right to withdraw a property from auction if a complete legal pack is not ready 3 days before auction day.

If there are one or two searches missing from the legal pack then it's usually okay to let the property go to auction, but if any of the key documents are missing e.g. the title documents or lease then it's better to withdraw from auction and enter in to a subsequent auction once the legal pack is ready.

Adding documents late: the addendum

Documents are frequently added to a pack after it has been published, and that is dealt with by an addendum. An addendum is simply a formal amendment to the pack, published on the auctioneer's website and announced from the rostrum before bidding opens. It forms part of the contract in the same way as the rest of the pack.

Adding a search that has just come back is routine and causes nobody any concern. Changing the terms of the sale at the last minute is a different matter. If a bidder has spent a week and a few hundred pounds having the pack reviewed and worked out their maximum bid, and the completion period or the buyer's cost contribution changes two days before the auction, some of them will simply not bid. If you want a cost contribution clause or an unusual completion date, get it into the pack from the start.

How long is the auction legal pack valid for?

When selling at auction it's usual to instruct the auctioneer and your solicitor at the same time, typically 5 to 6 weeks before the auction date. A good solicitor will begin compiling the legal pack as soon as they receive your instruction so that it's ready for prospective buyers no later than one week before auction day.

A legal pack is valid for 6 months from the date the documents are produced. So if for whatever reason you need to withdraw the property from auction and enter into a later auction a month or so later, the auction pack will still be valid.

That 6 month figure comes from the searches rather than the pack itself. Lenders will generally accept a local authority search up to 6 months old, and beyond that a buyer relying on a mortgage may need the search refreshing or a search indemnity policy putting in place. Cash buyers are more relaxed, but the 6 month mark is a sensible working rule either way.

Three things age at different rates, and it's worth knowing which:

• The Energy Performance Certificate lasts 10 years, so it almost never needs redoing between auctions.
• Searches are good for around 6 months. Past that, expect to pay again for the local authority search in particular.
• The management pack on a leasehold flat ages fastest. Service charge accounts, arrears and any planned major works move on, so most buyers' solicitors will want it refreshed after 3 to 6 months.

If a property is going back into an auction within a few weeks, none of this applies and the pack goes in as it is.

Auction Valuation

Common legal pack mistakes to avoid

Nearly every problem we see with legal packs falls into one of these six. All of them are avoidable, and all of them cost the seller money on auction day.

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make. Once your auction date is booked, it can feel as though the hard work is done and that your auctioneer and solicitor will take care of everything from there.

Your solicitor will handle the legal work and prepare the auction legal pack, while the auctioneer will manage the auction process and marketing. But both will still need information and documents from you. You may need to complete forms, provide certificates and guarantees, and supply any other paperwork they request.

If you are slow to provide something, the legal pack can be delayed. That may leave buyers with very little time to review it before auction day.

Leaving out a search to save a relatively small amount can be a false economy. Buyers want as much certainty as possible before they bid, and a missing search can leave unanswered questions about the property.

Rather than assuming everything is fine, some buyers may allow for the worst and reduce what they are prepared to bid, while others may decide not to bid at all.

Compared with the value of the property and the potential cost of losing bidders, searches are usually a small part of preparing a strong legal pack.

If you do not know the answer to a question, do not guess. Say that you do not know and, where helpful, explain why.

For example, if the property has been inherited and the executors have never lived there, make that clear on the form. An honest "not known" is far better than giving an answer that later turns out to be wrong.

Guessing can create unnecessary problems and, in some cases, could leave the seller facing a misrepresentation claim.

If you know about a problem with the property, do not try to ignore it. This could be a boundary dispute, a shared drive without a formal right of way, an extension without the correct approvals, or outstanding service charges.

Auction buyers are often comfortable with properties that have problems, as long as they understand what they are taking on. What is more likely to put them off is uncertainty, or the feeling that something important is being withheld.

Being open about known issues gives buyers the chance to assess the risk properly and bid with confidence.

For a leasehold flat, the management pack is a crucial part of the legal paperwork. It can show buyers the level of service charges, whether any money is outstanding and whether major works are planned or expected.

Without this information, buyers may be left unsure about the ongoing costs and potential liabilities that come with the property. That uncertainty can make them cautious about bidding.

If the management pack is unlikely to be ready in time for buyers to review it properly, it may be better to postpone the sale to the next auction rather than go ahead with an incomplete pack.

Avoid making important changes to the sale terms just before the auction. Adding extra buyer costs, shortening the completion period or changing the deposit at the last minute can unsettle bidders who have already reviewed the legal pack and prepared to bid.

Agree the special conditions before the legal pack is published and, wherever possible, keep them unchanged. Buyers are more likely to bid confidently when they know exactly what they are committing to.

Buying at auction: how to read a legal pack

This page is written for sellers, but a good many of our readers are looking at a legal pack from the other side. The most important thing to understand as a buyer is that at an unconditional auction there is no cooling-off period, no "subject to contract" and no renegotiation. When the hammer falls you have exchanged, your 10% deposit is committed, and you are bound to buy on the terms in that pack.

Have the pack reviewed by a solicitor before you bid. A legal pack review typically costs somewhere around £400 to £500 plus VAT for a freehold house, and more for a leasehold flat where the lease and management pack also need reading. Expedited reviews cost more again. Set against the money at stake, and against the cost of a mistake you cannot undo, it is not a place to economise.

The points worth checking, roughly in the order a solicitor will look at them:

• The special conditions, first. This is where the surprises live: a buyer's premium or administration fee, a contribution towards the seller's legal and auction costs, a shortened completion period, a non-standard deposit, or VAT payable on top of the price on a commercial lot.
• The title register. Check for restrictive covenants, rights of way over the property, missing legal access to it, and any charge or restriction that has to be dealt with on completion.
• The title plan. Make sure the red line matches what you saw at the viewing, particularly the garden, parking and any outbuildings.
• The searches. Check they exist, that they relate to the correct address, and how old they are. Missing searches are a risk you are accepting, not one the seller carries.
• The lease, on a flat. Unexpired term, ground rent and any escalation clause, service charge history and arrears, and notice of section 20 major works, which can run to five figures. If the lease is under 80 years, factor in a lease extension. See our page on short lease flats for what that involves.
• The tenancy, on a let property. Whether it is an assured shorthold or a regulated tenancy, the rent actually being paid, arrears, whether the deposit is protected, and what the Renters' Rights Act changes mean for your plans.
• What is missing. Ask the auctioneer. A document that has simply not been uploaded yet is a very different thing from one that does not exist.
• The addendum. Check it on the morning of the auction and listen to the announcements before bidding. A pack you reviewed a week ago may not be the pack you are bidding on.

If you are considering buying and want to talk something through, you are welcome to contact us, although we cannot review a legal pack for you or give legal advice on one. That is a job for a solicitor.

Legal packs and the modern method of auction

There are two types of auction sale, and the legal pack works differently in each.

At an unconditional auction, the traditional method and the one we recommend, the legal pack is the contract. Contracts exchange at the fall of the hammer, the buyer pays a 10% deposit and completion follows within about 28 days. Every buyer therefore has to read the pack, and have it reviewed, before they bid.

At a conditional auction, often marketed as the modern method of auction, the winning bidder does not exchange contracts on the day. They pay a non-refundable reservation fee, which is commonly around 4.5% of the price subject to a minimum, and then get roughly 28 days to exchange and a further 28 days to complete. The legal pack still exists, but a good deal of the legal work happens after the "sale", and the buyer can still walk away, losing the reservation fee but leaving the seller back at square one with weeks lost.

For a seller, that difference matters more than anything in the pack itself. Our guides on unconditional versus conditional auction and the modern method of auction set out the full comparison.

Where the government's reforms fit in

The government has set out plans to require sellers to provide detailed upfront information, including searches, title and tenure details, at the start of a sale rather than after a buyer is found. It is worth noticing that this is essentially a description of an auction legal pack. Auction has worked this way for decades. Our article on the home buying and selling reforms looks at what is proposed and why the profession is pushing back on parts of it.

Auction legal pack FAQs

Next steps - request an auction sale estimate

We are happy to assist with any questions you may have regarding compiling an auction legal pack, but we do not offer a service to compile legal packs.

Your solicitor will be responsible for compiling the auction legal pack.

If you do not have a solicitor already, the auctioneer who is selling your property may be able to recommend a suitable solicitor. Alternatively you may wish to find a solicitor on the Law Society website.

What we can do is tell you whether your property is well suited to auction and what it is likely to achieve, so you know whether preparing a pack is worth doing at all. That estimate is free and there is no obligation attached to it.

If you're considering selling your property at auction please contact us on 0800 862 0206.

Related guides

1. How to sell your house at auction ›
2. Costs for selling a house at auction ›
3. The property auction sale process ›
4. Auction reserve and guide prices explained ›
5. Property auction glossary of terms ›
6. Selling at auction FAQs ›