My fiance and I are looking to acquire a flat in Gillingham and are in fact using a Gillingham conveyancing firm. Within the past 48 hours our conveyancer has sent a preliminary report and documents to look through with a view to exchanging next week. Chelsea Building Society have this morning contacted us to inform me that there is now an issue as our Gillingham solicitor is not on their approved list of lawyers. What do we do from here?
When purchasing a property with the benefit of a mortgage it is standard for the purchasers' lawyers to also act for the mortgage company. In order to act for a bank or building society a law firm has to be on that lender's conveyancing panel. An application has to be made by the law firm to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the firm has to satisfy and indeed some lenders now require their panel members to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Accreditation Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your mortgage company and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own lawyers to represent them. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Gillingham lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you have another set of people involved.
I require conveyancing for a flat in a relatively new development (five years built) in Gillingham. Almost all the properties are already occupied. Is it really necessary to order neighbourhood searches as part of conveyancing in Gillingham?
Conveyancing Searches are a vital link in the Gillingham conveyancing process. There are numerous search providers delivering Gillingham conveyancing searches, as well direct from the local authority. These are usually referred to as personal search companies and they produce, not surprisingly, personal searches. Nevertheless, all Local Authority Search conveyancing products have one thing in common - they must secure their data from the local authority.
Can I use your services to find a Conveyancing solicitor in Gillingham even where I’m not purchasing or disposing of a house, for instance if I want to buy a shop in Gillingham with a mortgage from The Mortgage Works?
The service is mainly used to find domestic conveyancing solicitors in Gillingham but we have recorded towards the bottom of this page some Gillingham commercial conveyancing firms. You will need to speak with the company directly to establish if they can also act for The Mortgage Works
A colleague advised me that where I am purchasing in Gillingham I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. What does it cover?
A search of this type is sometimes included in the estimate for your Gillingham conveyancing searches. It is a large document of more than thirty pages, listing and detailing important information about Gillingham around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the local Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime details, Local Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful information concerning Gillingham.
Despite weeks of looking the Title Certificate and documents to my property can not be found. The lawyers who dealt with the conveyancing in Gillingham 4 years ago no longer exist. What do I do?
Gone are the days when you need to have the physical official documentation to prove you are the owner of your registered land or premises, as the Land Registry have everything they need in a digital format.
I am in need of some leasehold conveyancing in Gillingham. Before diving in I would like to find out the remaining lease term.
If the lease is recorded at the land registry - and most are in Gillingham - then the leasehold title will always include the short particulars of the lease, namely the date; the term; and the original parties. From a conveyancing perspective such details then enable any prospective buyer and lender to confirm that any lease they are looking at is the one relevant to that title. For any other purpose, such as confirming how long the term was granted for and calculating what is left, then the register should be sufficient on it's own.
Gillingham Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Queries before buying
-
You should be aware that where the lease has fewer than 80 years it will have adverse implications on the marketability of the property. It is worth checking with your bank that they are willing to go ahead with the loan given the lease term. A short lease means that you will probably need a lease extension at some point and it is worth finding out how much this would cost. Remember, in most cases you would need to own the premises for a couple of years in order to be eligible to carry out a lease extension. The best form of lease structure is if the freehold interest is owned by the leaseholders. In this arrangement the lessees enjoy being in charge if their destiny and notwithstanding that a managing agent is often employed where it is larger than a house conversion, the managing agent retained by the leaseholders.