As a first time buyer what is the most important piece of guidance you can give me concerning purchase conveyancing in Bedlington?
Not many law firms or advisers will tell you this but conveyancing in Bedlington and elsewhere in England and Wales is often a confrontational process. Put another way, when it comes to conveyancing there is plenty of opportunity for friction between you and others involved in the transaction. E.g., the seller, selling agent and sometimes your mortgage company. Choosing a lawyer for your conveyancing in Bedlington is a critical decision as your conveyancer is your adviser, and is the SOLE party in the legal process whose interest is to look after your best interests and to keep you safe.
We are witnessing a worrying ongoing adversarial element to conveyancing- someone must be blamed for the process taking so long. We recommend that you your first instinct should be to trust your solicitor above all other players when it comes to the legal transfer of property.
Do I select a Licenced Conveyancer or Solicitor for conveyancing in Bedlington?
There are many recorded licenced Conveyancers in Bedlington and Solicitor firms in Bedlington who provide Conveyancing services We would stress that the two are supervised by regulatory bodies with both specialising in the legal work in the home buying process. Both can conduct other property legal work such as remortgage conveyancing, lease extensions and transfer of equity conveyancing.
After much negotiation I have agreed a price on an apartment in Bedlington. My mortgage broker pressured me to appoint their solicitor. I paid an on account payment of £200. A few days later, the solicitor called me sheepishly admitting that they were not on the Nottingham 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 Nottingham 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 was told two weeks ago that my mortgage has been agreed to by Coventry BS. Is it usual for Coventry BS to only issue the offer once my solicitor in Bedlington is approved on their conveyancing panel? Coventry BS have asked my solicitor to see a copy of their PI Insurance.
Mortgage companies tend not to not issue an offer until they have details of a lawyer on their panel. It can take a few weeks for Coventry BS to deal with your lawyer's application to be on the Coventry BS conveyancing panel. There's no guarantee that your solicitor will be accepted.
My partner and I are planning on selling our property in Bedlington and the buyers lawyers are claiming that there is a risk of it being built on contaminated land. Any high street Bedlington lawyer would know that there is no such problem. It does beg the question why the purchasers instructed a nationwide conveyancing outfit rather than a conveyancing solicitor in Bedlington. We have lived in Bedlington for 5 years we know that this is a non issue. Is it a good idea to get in touch with our local Authority to seek clarification need.
It sounds as though you may have a conveyancing lawyer already. What do they say? You must enquire of 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 life insurance to cover that same illness)
Are there restrictive covenants that are commonly identified as part of conveyancing in Bedlington?
Restrictive covenants can be picked up when reviewing land registry title as part of the legal transfer of property in Bedlington. An 1874 stipulation that was seen was ‘The houses to be erected on the estate are each to be of a uniform elevation in accordance with the drawings to be prepared or approved by the vendor’s surveyor…’
In my capacity as executor for the estate of my father I am disposing of a property in Neath but reside in Bedlington. My solicitor (approximately 260 kilometers awayrequires that I sign a statutory declaration before completion. Can you recommend a conveyancing solicitor in Bedlington to witness this legal document for me?
Technically speaking you are not likely to need to have the documents attested by a conveyancing solicitor. Normally any notary public or qualified solicitor will do regardless of whether they are located in Bedlington
I work for a long established estate agent office in Bedlington where we see a number of leasehold sales derailed due to leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received contradictory information from local Bedlington conveyancing solicitors. Please can you shed some light as to whether the owner of a flat can commence the lease extension formalities for the buyer?
Provided that the seller has owned the lease for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to kick-start the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. This means that the proposed purchaser need not have to sit tight for 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done before, or simultaneously with completion of the sale.
An alternative approach is to agree the lease extension with the freeholder either before or after the sale. If you are informally negotiating there are no rules and so you cannot insist on the landlord agreeing to grant an extension or transferring the benefit of an agreement to the purchaser.
Bedlington Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Questions you should ask before Purchasing
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Where a Bedlington lease has less than eighty years it will impact the marketability of the flat. It is worth checking with your lender that they are content with remaining years on the lease. Leases with less than 80 years remaining means that you will most likely need a lease extension at some point and you need to have some idea of how much this will be. For most Bedlingtonlease extensions you will be required to have owned the premises for two years in order to be legally able to carry out a lease extension. How many of the leaseholders are in arrears for their maintenance charge payments? For many Bedlington leaseholds the cost for major works tend not to be included within service charges, albeit that there some managing agents in Bedlington obliged leaseholders to pay into a reserve fund created for the specific intention of building a fund for larger repairs or maintenance.