What the subject covers
Property Law and Practice is the conveyancing transaction, residential and commercial, from instructions to registration — with leasehold, security and tax attached. It sits in FLK2 Session 2 alongside the criminal subjects and Solicitors Accounts.
It is the most sequential subject in FLK2, which makes it examinable in the same way Dispute Resolution is: what comes next, and what goes wrong if it does not.
Taking instructions and the ethics
Conflicts first: acting for buyer and seller, or for joint buyers with different interests, or for borrower and lender, and when each is permissible. Then client identification and the anti-money-laundering checks, client care and costs information, and the mortgage instructions that come with acting for a lender.
Undertakings deserve their own attention. They are examined regularly, they bind personally, and the exam likes putting one in front of you that a solicitor should not give — to discharge a mortgage from proceeds not yet received, for example.
Investigating title
For registered land: the register and its three parts, the class of title, and the entries that matter — restrictions, notices, and the burdens in the property register. For unregistered land: the epitome, establishing a good root, the chain of ownership, and searches of the Land Charges Register.
Then the problems and what to do about them: covenants and how they are enforced, easements and rights of way, missing documents, defects that can be insured over, and when to raise a requisition rather than proceed.
Searches and enquiries
Which search answers which risk is a favourite question, because each search has one job:
- Local search— planning, building regulations, highways and the local authority’s own interests.
- Drainage and water — connection to mains supply and sewerage.
- Environmental — contamination and flood risk.
- Chancel repair, mining and other location-specific searches where the area requires them.
- Pre-completion searches — the Land Registry priority search, giving a priority period for registration, and a bankruptcy search against a borrower.
Alongside them sit enquiries of the seller, and the principle that governs the whole stage: the buyer takes the property as found unless something is disclosed or discovered.
The contract and exchange
The standard conditions and the special conditions that vary them, the deposit and how it is held, the contract rate, and what is included in the sale. Then exchange itself: the formulas used, when the contract becomes binding, what passes on exchange, and where the risk sits afterwards — which is why insurance is examined here.
A recurring question shape: something happens to the property between exchange and completion, and the options offer competing accounts of who bears the loss.
Completion and afterwards
- Pre-completion: the transfer deed and its execution, the completion statement, the mortgage advance, and the searches that give you priority.
- Completion: how it happens in practice, the Law Society’s completion by post arrangements, and discharge of the seller’s mortgage.
- Post-completion: the tax return and payment within the statutory deadline, registration within the priority period, and the consequences of missing either.
- Delayed completion: notice to complete, the compensation payable, and the remedies for breach.
Leasehold adds its own layer — the landlord’s consent, the licence to assign, apportionment of service charge and rent, and notice to the landlord after completion.
Where the marks go
- Which search. Straightforward marks if you learnt them, guesses if you did not.
- Deadlines after completion. Tax return and registration, and what happens when the priority period lapses.
- Undertakings. The question is rarely what an undertaking is; it is whether the solicitor can safely give this one.
- Risk between exchange and completion. Candidates answer with what feels fair rather than what the conditions provide.
- Money. A property question that is really a Solicitors Accounts question — a deposit received, a bill delivered, a transfer made — is common in this session, by design.
Revise it as a chronology: the stages of a transaction in order, with the documents, searches and deadlines hung on them. Then practise questions across the whole session, as the FLK2 guide describes.