This question may be naive but I am wet behind the ears as a 1st time purchaser of a two bedroom flat in Herne Bay. Do I collect the keys to the premises on the completion date from my lawyer? If this is the case, I will use a High Street conveyancing solicitor in Herne Bay?
There is no need to visit the lawyers office on the day of completion. Conveyancing lawyers for you will arrange to send the completion advance to the seller's conveyancers, and once they have received this, you will be invited to pick up the keys from the Estate Agents and move into your new home. This tends to happen early afternoon.
My wife and I have arranged the release of further funds on our home loan from Yorkshire BS as we want to conduct renovations to our property in Herne Bay. Do we need to appoint a nearby Herne Bay solicitor on the Yorkshire BS conveyancing panel to handle the paperwork?
Yorkshire BS do not ordinarily appoint firms on their conveyancing panel 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 Yorkshire BS panel.
I had an offer accepted on a house in Herne Bay on 14/8/2026, valuation was booked 3 days after, received a clean bill of health. Property lawyer appointed, so all that was missing was my mortgage offer. Having made daily calls to Santander and chasing them on my offer, I have now been told that my offer will not be issued unless the lawyer is on the Santander conveyancing panel. Are Santander entitled to hold back the Mortgage pending the lawyer being on the approved list?
A lender would not issue an offer until they have details of a lawyer on their panel. It can take a few weeks for Santander to deal with your lawyer's application to be on the Santander conveyancing panel. There's no guarantee that your solicitor will be accepted.
My friend advised me that if I am purchasing in Herne Bay I should ask my conveyancer to carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?
A search of this type is occasionally included in the estimate for your Herne Bay conveyancing searches. It is not a small document of about 40 pages, listing and detailing important information about Herne Bay around the property and the people living there. It incorporates 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 statistics, Herne Bay Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful information about Herne Bay.
I am purchasing my first flat in Herne Bay benefiting from help to buy. The builders would not move on the amount so I negotiated 6k of extras instead. The house builders rep told me not reveal to my conveyancer about the deal as it may adversely affect my loan with the lender. Is this normal?.
All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the builder of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the UK Finance website. UK Finance form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.
Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.
Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.
I have been on the look out for a ground for flat up to £235,500 and identified one round the corner in Herne Bay I like with amenity areas and transport links nearby, however it only has 61 remaining years left on the lease. I can't really find anything else in Herne Bay for this price, so just wondered if I would be making a mistake buying a lease with such few years left?
Should you require a home loan the shortness of the lease may be a potential deal breaker. Reduce the price by the anticipated lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the current proprietor has owned the property for at least 2 years you can request that they 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 about this matter.
I am a negotiator for a reputable estate agent office in Herne Bay where we have witnessed a number of leasehold sales jeopardised due to short leases. I have received contradictory information from local Herne Bay conveyancing solicitors. Please can you confirm whether the seller of a flat can initiate the lease extension process for the purchaser on completion of the sale?
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. The benefit of this is that the buyer need not have to sit tight for 2 years for a lease extension. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done prior to, or simultaneously with completion of the disposal of the property.
Alternatively, it may be possible 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 purchaser.
Herne Bay Conveyancing for Leasehold Flats - Sample of Queries Prior to buying
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How many years remain on the lease? The majority of Herne Bay leasehold flats will incur a service charge for the upkeep of the block invoiced by the freeholder. Should you purchase the apartment you will have to meet this charge, usually periodically during the year. This can differ from a couple of hundred pounds to thousands of pounds for bigger purpose-built buildings. In all likelihood there will be a ground rent for you to pay yearly, ordinarily this is not a large sum, say around £50-£100 but you need to enquire it because occasionally it could be prohibitively expensive. It would be sensible to find out if there is anything that is prohibited in the lease. For example it is very common in Herne Bay leases that pets are not allowed in certain buildings in Herne Bay. If you like the apartmentin Herne Bay however your dog is not allowed to live with you then you will be presented with a difficult decision.
My mother and father cant seem to find their Herne Bay land registry title on the site. They recall that 50 years ago when they bought the bungalow there were complications with the post code not being identified on some systems.
Almost all premises in Herne Bay should be revealed. Have you limited your search with just the postcode. Usually it will reveal all the premises inside that postcode. Where registered it will be there with a title number. Where they bought sixty years ago it's conceivable it may be unregistered. The address may still be revealed but with the title number identified as 'na'. In this scenario you will need to locate the original title deeds which could be with your parent’s mortgage company.