My wife and I are looking to buy a house in Edenbridge and are in fact using a Edenbridge conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our conveyancer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with a view to exchanging next week. TSB have this afternoon contacted us to advise us that they have now hit a problem as our Edenbridge lawyer is not on their conveyancing panel. Is this a problem?
When purchasing a property with mortgage finance it is standard for the purchasers' solicitors to also act for 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 solicitor should contact your mortgage company 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 are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the bank's conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Edenbridge lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you have another set of people involved.
Are the Edenbridge conveyancing solicitors identified as being on the Lloyds conveyancing panel, together with their details provided by Lloyds?
Edenbridge conveyancing firms themselves provide us confirmation that they are on the Lloyds conveyancing panel as opposed to being supplied with a list from Lloyds directly.
I am assisting my niece sell her house in Edenbridge. Will the conveyancer arrange the EPC or should I organise this?
After the demise of HIPs, energy assessments was retained a required element of selling a house. An energy performance certificate must be commissioned before the property is advertised. This is not something that conveyancers ordinarily arrange. If you are instructing a Edenbridge conveyancing solicitor they might be willing to arrange energy performance certificates given their relationships with reputable Edenbridge accredited person
Can you help - my lawyer says that missing deeds insurance is needed on my purchase. What is the level of cover for Edenbridge conveyancing?
The right level of missing deeds indemnity insurance depends on who your lender is. It would differ for example between Halifax and Leeds Building Society. Conveyancing lawyers as opposed to borrowers take out such insurances.
I recently had an offer agreed on an apartment in Edenbridge. My mortgage broker recommended their conveyancers. I paid an advanced payment of £200. Shortly after, the solicitor contacted me embarrassingly acknowledging that they were not on the Nationwide conveyancing panel. Am I right in thinking that I should be due a refund?
You should be able to recover this from the law firm if they were not on the Nationwide panel. They should have asked at the outset which lender you were obtaining a mortgage with. An important lesson to readers of this site is to check that the lawyers are on the appropriate lender panel.
We are selling our house in Edenbridge and the buyers lawyers are claiming that there is a risk of it being constructed land that was not decontaminated. Any local lawyer would know this is not the case. For the life of me I don't know why the purchasers are using a factory type conveyancing firm rather than a conveyancing solicitor in Edenbridge. We have lived in Edenbridge for six years we know that this is a non issue. Should we contact our local Authority to obtain clarification need.
It would appear that you have a conveyancing firm currently acting for you. What do they say? You must check with your lawyer before you do anything. It is very possible that once the local authority has been informed of a potential issue it cannot be insured against (a bit like being diagnosed with a serious illness and then taking out health insurance to cover that same sickness)
I used Action Conveyancing a few years ago for my conveyancing in Edenbridge. Now, I need the files but the law firm has closed. What do I do?
Do contact the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) to help locate your conveyancing files. They can be contacted on please contact on 0870 606 2555. Alternatively, you should use their online form to make an enquiry. You will need to provide the SRA with as much information as possible to assist their search, including the name and address in Edenbridge of the conveyancing firm of solicitors you previously used, the name of conveyancing solicitor with whom you had dealings, and the date on which you last had dealings with the firm.
My wife and I may need to sub-let our Edenbridge basement flat for a while due to a new job. We used a Edenbridge conveyancing firm in 2001 but they have since shut and we did not think at the time get any guidance as to whether the lease permits subletting. How do we find out?
A small minority of properties in Edenbridge do contain a provision to say that subletting is only allowed with permission. The landlord cannot unreasonably withhold but, in such cases, they would need to review references. Experience suggests that problems are usually caused by unsatisfactory tenants rather than owner-occupiers and for that reason you can expect the freeholder to take up the references and consider them carefully before granting consent.
Edenbridge Leasehold Conveyancing - Examples of Questions you should consider Prior to buying
-
You should want to find out as much as possible about the managing agents as they will impact your use and enjoyment of the property. As the proprietor of a leasehold property you will be at the mercy of the managing agents from a financial perspective and when it comes to practical issues like the cleanliness of the communal areas. Enquire of other tenants what they think of their management. On a final note, investigate as to the dates that you are obliged pay the maintenance charge to the managing agents and precisely how they are spending the funds. Is the freehold owned jointly by the leaseholders?