My flat in Sittingbourne is up for sale and I have accepted an offer. Will my property lawyer have to be on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel in order to deal with paying off my mortgage?
Ordinarily, even if your lawyer is not on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel they can still act for you on your sale. It might be that the lender will not release the original deeds (if applicable and increasingly irrelevant) until after the mortgage is paid off. You should speak to your lawyer directly before you start the process though to ensure that there is no problem as lenders are changing their conditions fairly frequently at the moment.
I have paid off my mortgage with Nottingham. I assume I don't need a Sittingbourne lawyer on the Nottingham panel to remove the mortgage at the Land Registry. Please confirm.
If you have finished paying off your Nottingham mortgage, they may send you evidence showing that you have paid it off. Alternatively they may notify the Land Registry directly. The Land Registry need to see this evidence before they will remove the Nottingham mortgage from the register. Nottingham, and any evidence they send you, will determine the action you need to take. In cases where no conveyancer is acting for you and you have paid off your mortgage:
- but are not moving to another property
- where Nottingham has sent the Land Registry the discharge electronically, and
- Nottingham has instructed the Land Registry to do so
I recently had an offer agreed on a house in Sittingbourne. My mortgage broker recommended their conveyancers. I paid an advanced payment of £150. A few days later, the property lawyer called me embarrassingly acknowledging that they were not on the Virgin Money 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 Virgin Money 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.
I had an offer accepted on a house in Sittingbourne on 4/12/2025, valuation was booked 4 days later, received a clean bill of health. Property lawyer appointed, so the only thing outstanding was my mortgage offer. Having made daily calls to Nottingham and chasing them on my offer, I have now been told that my offer will not be issued unless the lawyer is on the Nottingham conveyancing panel. Can the lender hold off the offer?
A lender would not issue an offer until they have details of a lawyer on their panel. It can take a few weeks for Nottingham to deal with your lawyer's application to be on the Nottingham conveyancing panel. There's no guarantee that your solicitor will be accepted.
Over the last few months I have been searching for a flat up to £195,000 and found one close by in Sittingbourne I like with amenity areas and railway links in the vicinity, the downside is that it's only got 61 remaining years left on the lease. I can't really find anything else in Sittingbourne suitable, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error purchasing a lease with such few years left?
Should you require a mortgage the remaining unexpired lease term may be an issue. Discount the price by the expected lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the current proprietor has owned the property for at least 2 years you could ask them to start the process of the extension and then assign it to you. You can add 90 years to the current lease term and have £0 ground rent by law. You should consult your conveyancing lawyer about this matter.
Given that I will soon spend 450k on a house in Sittingbourne I would like to have a conversation with the conveyancer about myhome move ahead of giving the go ahead to the firm. Can this be arranged?
This is something that we recommend - we would be delighted to talk to you we do not take any clients on without you liaising with the solicitor who will be carrying out your property ownership legalities in Sittingbourne.There is no ‘factory style conveyancing’ - every client is an important person, not a file reference. The solicitors that we put you in touch with believe that the fees you are calculated and presented to you for your conveyancing in Sittingbourne should be the figure that you are charged.
Back In 2001, I bought a leasehold house in Sittingbourne. Conveyancing and Virgin Money mortgage went though with no issue. A letter has just been received from someone claiming to own the reversionary interest in the property. It included a ground rent demand for rent dating back to 1998. The conveyancing practitioner in Sittingbourne who acted for me is not around. Any advice?
The first thing you should do is contact HMLR to be sure that the individual purporting to own the freehold is indeed the registered owner of the freehold reversion. You do not need to instruct a Sittingbourne conveyancing practitioner to do this as it can be done on-line for £3. You should note that in any event, even if this is the legitimate landlord, under the Limitation Act 1980 no more than 6 years of rent can be collected.
I purchased a garden flat in Sittingbourne, conveyancing was carried out in 1995. Can you let me have an estimated range of the fair premium for a lease extension? Comparable properties in Sittingbourne with an extended lease are worth £260,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £45 charged once a year. The lease terminates on 21st October 2100
With just 74 years remaining on your lease the likely cost is going to span between £8,600 and £9,800 plus costs.
The figure above a general guide to costs for extending a lease, but we cannot give you the actual costs in the absence of comprehensive due diligence. You should not use this information in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There may be other issues that need to be considered and clearly you should be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. You should not move forward based on this information without first getting professional advice.
My mother and father cant seem to find their Sittingbourne property on the HMLR online search facility. They have a vague memory back in the 60’s when they bought the house there were complications concerning Sittingbourne not being identified on some systems.
Nearly all premises in Sittingbourne should show up. Have you tried a search with just the postcode. Usually it will mention all the houses and flats within that postcode. Assuming the property is recorded it will show up with a title number. Where they bought fifty years ago it's conceivable it may be unregistered. The address could still be revealed but with the title number shown 'na'. In this scenario you will need to locate the original title papers which may be with your parent’s mortgage company.