Owning your own home

CHAPS transfer is normally the way - It costs £15 - £25, but is effectively limitless.

You do it when your solicitor asks you to they settle immediately (or should)

First checking with them that the account number they've given you is correct, in case their email has been spoofed.

Depends on the bank. Eg. Barclays has a £50k limit for single transfers online, you can do up to £100k in any 24h period. On the phone or via app it is usually less. I would call up and ask your bank, it’s worth flagging it to them in any case as even smaller transfers could be temporarily held due to money laundering etc which can then simply be waved through

Call your bank, tell them the date you're going to transfer it and ask them to remove (or raise) your limit. They'll ask you what it's for etc..

I ended up doing it about a week and a half in advance due to an ever moving exchange date. I'd definitely do it earlier than on the day just to avoid the stress of it not working. You can do it over the course of a few days in advance to keep within your bank's limit (think mine was £25k).

The mortgage company we used sent our loan to the wrong bank account for our solicitor. An old one they had on file rather than the details he sent them. Fortunately, after much frantic calling, he managed to get it back. He earned his money that day (much more than on other days).

We had a similar 20k per day limit so transferred the money to our solicitor over several days. I think we also sent a small amount (£100 maybe) and got confirmation it had arrived before sending the big bucks.