Our son is buying a newly built flat in Berkeley with a home loan from Co-operative. His lawyer has advised him of a delay in receiving the ‘Disclosure of Incentive Form’. Who needs to receive the form?
The form is intended to provide information to the main parties engaged in the transaction. Therefore, it will be provided to your son’s lawyer who should be on the Co-operative conveyancing panel as a standard part of the process, and to the valuer when asked. The developer will be required to start the process by downloading the form and completing it. The form will therefore need to be available for the valuer at the time of his or her site visit. The form should be sent to the Co-operative conveyancing panel solicitor as early as possible, in order to avoid any last minute delays, and no later than at exchange of contracts.
The Berkeley conveyancing solicitors that I appointed last week on my house acquisition in Berkeley have without warning shut down. I only went with them because I had to have a solicitor on the Skipton conveyancing panel and my preferred Berkeley lawyer was not. I sent them a cheque for £250 in advance. What are my options?
Assuming that you have an Estate Agent in the equation then inform them immediately so that they can let the sellers know that there may be a slight delay due to the problems encountered. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and urge their lawyer to send a new set of papers to your new solicitors. You should appoint new lawyers that are on the Skipton conveyancing panel and notify the lender. If you have paid over any money, it will hopefully be held by the SRA as money in an intervened firm's bank accounts is transferred to the SRA. Then, the SRA or the intervention agent looks at the intervened firm's accounts to work out who the money belongs to. To claim your money you will need to contact the SRA. If the SRA cannot return money you are owed from the firm's bank accounts, or if they can only return part of the money, you can apply to the Compensation Fund for a grant. Your new solicitors may be able to help.
My wife and I have arranged the release of further monies on our mortgage from Virgin Money as we wish to conduct alterations to our property in Berkeley. Are we obliged to select a high street Berkeley solicitor on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel to handle the legals?
Virgin Money don't usually appoint a member of their approved list of lawyers to deal with the formalities. If they do require any legal work then you would need to ensure that such a lawyer was on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel.
We have agreed to purchase a house in Berkeley. A rare aspect is that the roof has a solar panel. HSBC have issued a mortgage offer so presumably this is not a concern to them. Why is my solicitor raising questions about the panel?
As your lender is HSBC your lawyer must follow the conveyancing instructions set out in Section 2 of UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook for HSBC. The CML Handbook stipulates minimum conditions for solar panel roof-space leases, and conveyancers are required to report to HSBC where a lease does not satisfy these requirements. The conditions relate to the installation of panels on properties nationwide and is not limited to Berkeley.
I recently had an offer agreed on an apartment in Berkeley. My mortgage broker recommended their conveyancers. I paid an on account payment of £150. Not long after, the conveyancer called me embarrassingly acknowledging that they were not on the Co-operative 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 Co-operative 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.
Despite weeks of looking the Title Certificate and documents to my home are lost. The conveyancers who conducted the conveyancing in Berkeley 5 years ago have long since closed. What do I do?
As long as the title is registered the details of your proprietorship will be recorded by the Land Registry with a Title Number. It is easy to execute a search at the Land Registry, find your house and obtain current copies of the property title for less than a fiver. Where the property is Leasehold then the Land Registry will usually hold a file duplicate of the Registered Lease and again, a copy can be ordered for £20 inclusive of VAT.
I have been on the look out for a ground for flat up to £245,000 and found one round the corner in Berkeley I like with a park and transport links nearby, however it only has 61 years on the lease. I can't really find anything else in Berkeley for this price, so just wondered if I would be making a mistake purchasing a short lease?
If you require a home loan that many years will likely be a potential deal breaker. Reduce the offer by the expected 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 could ask them to start the process of the extension and pass it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the existing lease term and have £0 ground rent by law. You should speak to your conveyancing solicitor regarding this matter.
Is there a reason that Berkeley conveyancing fees differ for leasehold and freehold properties?
Leasehold conveyancing in Berkeley more often than not will involve additional work for instance fully examining the lease, communicating with the landlord, obtaining up to date rent receipts, landlord’s consents, management company’s accounts etc.