My wife and I are acquiring a brand new apartment in Birmingham and my solicitor is telling me that she has to the mortgage company to disclose incentives from the seller. I am under pressure to sign contracts and I have no desire to delay the conveyancing. Is my lawyer right?
You should not exchange unless you have been advised to do so by your property lawyer. A precondition to being on a lender panel is to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook conditions. The CML Conveyancing Handbook requires that your lawyer have the appropriate Disclosure of Incentive form completed by the developer and accepted by your lender.
I am assisting my niece sell her flat in Birmingham. Does the solicitor order the energy performance certificate or do I organise this?
After the demise of Home Packs, energy assessments remained a compulsory part of selling a property. An EPC needs to be to hand in advance of the property being advertised. It is not something that law firms normally arrange. If you are instructing a Birmingham conveyancing solicitor they might be able to arrange energy performance certificates given their relationships with long established local providers
I recently had an offer accepted on an apartment in Birmingham. My financial adviser pressured me to appoint their conveyancer. I paid an upfront payment of £225. A few days later, the conveyancer called me embarrassingly acknowledging 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've digested plenty of house buying guides, I note that they all recommend that you should get your house surveyed prior to buying it. When I asked my local Birmingham solicitor - who is on the Lloyds conveyancing panel - on this she said they don't do this and I need to contract an independent surveyor. Is that normal?
Lloyds will need an independent valuation of the property. Your lawyer will not arrange this. Usually Lloyds will appoint their own surveyor to do this, and you will have to pay for it. Remember that this is a valuation for mortgage purposes and not a survey. Your solicitor will not organise the survey but they may be able to put you in touch with a local one that they recommend. RICS offers a find a surveyor service (just google it) where you can search for a qualified surveyor by your Birmingham postcode. As you are getting a mortgage with Lloyds, you could contact them to see if they have a list of approved surveyors in Birmingham.
My friend recommended that where I am purchasing in Birmingham I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. What does it cover?
This is a search is usually included in the estimate for your Birmingham conveyancing searches. It is a large report of more than thirty pages, listing and setting out significant information about Birmingham around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Birmingham Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime statistics, Birmingham Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about Birmingham.
I've recently found out that there is a flying freehold element on a house I put an offer in two weeks back in what should have been a simple, no chain conveyancing. Birmingham is the location of the property. Is there any advice you can give?
Flying freeholds in Birmingham are unusual but are more likely to exist in relation to terraced houses. Even where you use a solicitor outside Birmingham you must be sure that your lawyer goes through the deeds thoroughly. Your bank may require your conveyancing solicitor to take out an indemnity policy. Some of the more diligent conveyancing solicitors in Birmingham may determine that this is not enough and that the deeds be re-written to give you the most up to date legal protection. If so, the next door neighbour also had to sign up to the revised deeds.It is possible that your lender will not accept the situation so the sooner you find out the better. You should also check with your insurance broker as to whether they will insure a flying freehold residence.
Am I right to be wary by brokers that I am dealing with are recommending a nationwide conveyancing firm rather than a High Street Birmingham conveyancing firm?
As with many professional services, often suggestions from relatives can be worth their weight in gold. But there are many players in a conveyancing deal; estate agents, mortgage brokers and mortgage companies might all recommend lawyers to choose. Sometimes these solicitors might be known to one of the organisations as being good in their field, but occasionally there might be a commercial relationship behind the recommendation. You are at liberty to choose your own conveyancer. Don't forget that many mortgage providers have an approved list of lawyers you must use for the mortgage related work in your home move.
What are my options where I am dissatisfied with the conveyancing practitioner who did my conveyancing in Birmingham?
We live in an imperfect world, and is is a fact of life that sometimes things do go wrong. Nevertheless there is recourse if you were not happy with your conveyancing in Birmingham. This varies from trying to resolve matters directly with them, through to reporting a conveyancer to their governing body. If you remain dissatisfied you may consider getting in touch with the Legal Ombudsman.