My wife and I are looking to purchase a house in Barnes and are in fact using a Barnes conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our conveyancer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report in anticipation of exchanging contracts shortly. Yorkshire Building Society have this evening contacted us to inform me that they have now hit a problem as our Barnes solicitor is not on their approved list of lawyers. Please explain?
Where you are buying a property needing a mortgage it is normal for the purchasers' lawyers to also represent the mortgage company. In order to act for a bank or building society a law firm has to be on that lender's conveyancing panel. An application has to be made by the law firm to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the firm has to satisfy and indeed some lenders now require their panel members to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Accreditation Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your bank and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own solicitors to act. You don't have to instruct a firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Barnes lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it may delay matters as you have another set of people involved.
I require conveyancing for an apartment in a relatively new development (6 years built) in Barnes. 95% of the properties have already been sold. Is it really necessary to order local searches as part of conveyancing in Barnes?
If you are purchasing a property with the assistance of a mortgage, your bank will need some (many) of the searches so you'll have no choice. If not, then Barnes conveyancing searches are optional. No doubt your conveyancer, will ’encourage’, perhaps strongly, that you should have the searches done, but he or she is duty bound in this regard. One thing to bear in mind; if you are likely to sell the house one day, it may be of interest to your future buyer what the searches contain. Sometimes houses with no practical issues can still throw up adverse search results. But if you demand that your lawyer to proceed without searches then your lawyer will have to follow your instructions or you will need to switch to another solicitor for your conveyancing in Barnes.
What is the best way to find out if the solicitor handling my conveyancing in Barnes is on the mortgage lender’sconveyancing panel? I am looking to avoid the situation of having one lawyer for me and one for Clydesdale thus paying £175.00 in another set of conveyancing costs.
Feel free to make the most of the search tool on this site. Please choose the mortgage company and type ‘Barnes’ or your preferred area and you will be presented with a number of lawyer located in Barnes or nearest you.
I'm buying my first flat in Barnes with a mortgage from Nationwide Building Society. The developers refused to reduce the amount so I negotiated 6k of fixtures and fittings instead. The sale representative advised me not to tell my conveyancer about the side-deal as it would affect my loan with the bank. Do I keep my lawyer in the dark?.
All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the developer of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.
Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.
Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.
I have been on the look out for a ground for flat up to £235,500 and identified one round the corner in Barnes I like with open areas and railway links in the vicinity, the downside is that it only has 61 years unexpired on the lease. There is not much else in Barnes suitable, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error acquiring a lease with such few years left?
Should you require a home loan the remaining unexpired lease term will be a potential deal breaker. Reduce the offer by the anticipated lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the current proprietor has owned the property for a minimum of 2 years you can ask them to start the process of the extension and pass it to you. You can add 90 years to the existing lease term with a zero ground rent applied. You should consult your conveyancing lawyer regarding this.
My conveyancers in Barnes have advised me that they can not locate my conveyancing file. To assist with my purchase I took out a mortgage with the mortgage company. Is it case that being on the bank conveyancing panel they need to have retained the file for a prescribed period?
It very much depends from lender to lender but many of the Terms and Conditions of Conveyancing Panel Appointment require the file to be held for a period of 6 years. That being said we have not seen a copy of the mortgage company Conveyancing Panel Terms. It might be worth you contacting the mortgage company directly.