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Route / 5 steps

Buying a place together

For a purchase in two names, or in one name with two people paying, before contracts rather than after completion.

Who this is for

You are buying somewhere together, or one of you is buying and both of you are paying for it.

What it is

Five steps. What each of you is putting in, the positions neither of you will move on, the money and home sections written down, a brief on what a declaration of trust does, and a list of where the paperwork lives.

The steps, in order

You can take them out of order. Nothing here locks a module, and no step waits on the one before it.

  • The Load

    The argument that is never about money.

    What each of you is putting in, and what each of you assumes that buys.

  • Non-Negotiables

    Committed separately. Revealed together.

    The positions neither of you will move on, committed separately before either has heard the other.

  • Your Terms

    Ten sections. Plain language. Both signatures.

    The money and home sections, written before a solicitor sees anything.

  • Legal Instruments

    What each document does, and what it cannot.

    What a declaration of trust does, what it cannot do, and a brief to hand a solicitor.

  • The Vault

    The index your family cannot find.

    Where the deeds, the policies and the mortgage paperwork actually live.

A route, not a gate

A route is a named list of modules with something written down at the end of it. Nothing in a route locks anything, and you can take the steps out of order.

Why a route rather than a list

Thirty-two modules is a lot to look at when you do not yet know which of them you need. A route is somebody having already answered that: these ones, in this order, because the earlier ones give the later ones something to work from. The Structural Report is easier to write an agreement from than a blank page, and it needs two finished Soundings before it exists at all.

What it does not do

It does not lock anything, and it is not a course. Nothing is withheld until you finish a step, there is no schedule, and stopping halfway costs you nothing — what you wrote stays written and the modules stay open. Where a module genuinely needs both of you, that module is what waits, exactly as it would if you had opened it on your own.

What it never shows either of you

A route shows where each of you has got to and nothing else. It does not record how long anything took, or how long the other one has left something undone. Elapsed time is not a number this product prints about a person.