Finally the sale completed on my house in Chigwell last November yet the purchaser is whats apping every few hours to moan that her lawyer is waiting to hear from mine. What should have happened following completion?
Following your house sale your lawyer is committed to deliver the transfer deeds and all of the paperwork to the buyer’s lawyers. Where relevant, your solicitor must also confirm that the legal charge in favour of the lender has been paid off to the buyers conveyancers. There is unlikely to be post completion procedures unique to conveyancing in Chigwell.
The deeds to my property can not be found. The solicitors who conducted the conveyancing in Chigwell 10 years ago have long since closed. What are my options?
Assuming the title is registered the details of your ownership will be recorded by HMLR under a Title Number. It is possible to conduct a search at the Land Registry, locate your house and get up to date copies of the property title for less than a fiver. Where the property is Leasehold then the Land Registry will also normally hold a certified duplicate of the Registered Lease and again, a copy can be ordered for £20 inclusive of VAT.
How do I use the search app to locate a conveyancing solicitor in Chigwell on the panel for my lender?
1st pick a lender such as HSBC Bank, Virgin Money or Alliance & Leicester then specify your location for instance Chigwell. Conveyancing organisations in Chigwell and further afield will then be listed.
Should I go with a Chigwell conveyancing lawyer who is local to the property I am purchasing? An old friend can perform the legal formalities however her office is 200miles away.
The primary upside of using a high street Chigwell conveyancing practice is that you can pop in to sign documents, present your ID and apply pressure on them where appropriate. Having local Chigwell know how is a bonus. However it's more important to get someone that will do a good and efficient job. If you know people who used your friend and in the main were impressed that should surpass using an unfamiliar Chigwell conveyancing solicitor just because they are round the corner.
I am employed by a busy estate agency in Chigwell where we see a number of leasehold sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received contradictory information from local Chigwell conveyancing firms. Can you clarify whether the vendor of a flat can commence the lease extension process for the buyer?
As long as 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 can avoid having to wait 2 years for a lease extension. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed prior to, or at the same time as completion of the disposal of the property.
An alternative approach is to extend the lease informally by agreement with the landlord 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 buyer.
After years of dialogue we cannot agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Chigwell. Can we issue an application to the Residential Property Tribunal Service?
if there is a missing landlord or if there is disagreement about the premium for a lease extension, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 you can apply to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal to determine the price payable.
An example of a Freehold Enfranchisement matter before the tribunal for a Chigwell flat is 201 & 201a St. Barnabas Road in October 2013. The Tribunal decided that the price to be paid by the Applicants for the freehold interest is £20,071. This case related to 2 flats. The remaining number of years on the lease was 69.26 years.
Two months into a sale of a flat in Chigwell. Conveyancing lawyers are doing their job but we have been asked to pay a fortune from the freeholder. So far we have forked out £275 for a leasehold management information and then a further £118 for responses to queries supplied by the purchaser's conveyancing practitioner.
Neither you or your conveyancing practitioner will have any say over the level of the charges for this information but the typical costs for the information for Chigwell leasehold property is £360. For Chigwell conveyancing sales it is conventional for the seller to cover the charges. The freeholder or their agents are under no statutory obligation to address such questions most will be content to do so - albeit often at high prices where the fees bear little relation to the work involved. Unfortunately there is no legislation that mandates fixed charges for administrative tasks. Nor is there any set time limit by which they are obliged to supply answers.