DIY Home Selling and Legal Process

Has anybody tried to sell their own home and/or do their own legal work related to the sale (I'm not keen to fork out loads to a lawyer for relatively little work - the purchaser's lawyers seems to do all the work and earns his/her fees).
My case is straightforward: sale proceeds will more than cover mortage outstanding, only bought three yeas ago so all deed searches have been relatively recent, and not buying another house.
How can I tackle the conveyancing myself (OASIS site says it's complex but doesn't really give any info on seller's side)?

Here is a very brief summary of the process by which somebody could (in theory only) sell their own house:

1. Prepare the contract for sale. You might be able to do this yourself, but I doubt it. Specifically, your title documents will not be released direct to you by your lender; they will release these to a solicitor on loan (on Accountable Trust as it is called) for the obvious reason that a solicitor is bonded and can be held acountable for loss of the deeds. Conceivably, you could prepare contracts based on getting a photocopy only of your title documents, but that still leaves the problem of having the necessary expertise.

2. Reply to the "requisitions on title" - i.e. a set of questions raised by the solicitor for the purchaser. You might be able to do this yourself, but again I doubt it.

3. Prepare some of the closing documents; approve some closing documents prepared by the purchasers solicitor. You might be able to push this job entirely onto the purchaser's solicitor, but I doubt it. And anyway, you wouldn't really know whether what you are signing is appropriate.

4. Close the sale; This would be particularly tricky. Specifically, no solicitor will accept your undertaking to discharge the mortgage out of the sale proceeds, or indeed to hand over the title documents (held by your lender) at some later date. So you would have to complete the sale at the office of the bank\building society who hold the mortgage and they would have to hand over the documents and give confirmation on the spot that the mortgage has been fully redeemed AND that they will send the vacated\released mortgage to the buyer's solicitor (because he will not accept your undertaking to forward it)

I think a previous contributor summarised the matter best, when he\she compared it to trying to carry out your own plastic surgery.

Good luck if you decide to go ahead with it.

I have had one experience of acting for a client who was buying from someone who wanted to do their own conveyancing. I put up with three weeks of constant phone calls from the vendor as to what to do, how to do it and when. At the end of that period, I had to inform the vendor that I was being paid to act on behalf of the purchaser and certainly wasnt being paid to do all of his work for him which is what was in reality happening. The vendor hadnt the first clue what to do. He didnt know where his title deeds were, or even what they looked like. He had no idea how to prepare a contract for sale. In this case, there was no mortgage on the property but it quickly descended into a farce. I ended up telling the purchaser that I was not happy to continue to act in the purchase because I was not satisfied that the vendor would be able to deal with the matter. Shortly afterwards the vendor employed a solicitor, thankfully. If anyone now told me they were either buying from or selling to someone who was acting for them selves without a solicitor, I would probably refuse to act in the transaction.