I plan on buying property in Honiton. My Conveyancer is not listed on the bank conveyancing panel. Am I still permitted to use my Honiton conveyancing solicitor even though they are not on the mortgage company approved list?
Your options include
- Complete the deal with your preferred Honiton solicitor but your mortgage company will no doubt instruct a conveyancing practitioner on their approved panel. This will result in additional cost together with potential delay.
- Get a new solicitor to act in the purchase, obviously checking they are on the mortgage company conveyancing panel.
- Convince your conveyancer to pull out all the stops to join the lender’s conveyancing panel
My wife and I intend to remortgage our apartment in Honiton with Co-operative. We have a son 19 who lives with us. Our solicitor requested us to identify any adults other than ourselves who reside at the property. Our lawyer has now e-mailed a document for our son to sign, giving up any rights in the event that the apartment is repossessed. I have a couple of concerns (1) Is this document specific to the Co-operative conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we remortgaged 5 years ago (2) Does our son by signing this extinguish his entitlement to inherit the property?
First, rest assured that your Co-operative conveyancing panel solicitor is doing the right thing as it is established procedure for any occupier who is aged 17 or over to sign the necessary Consent Form, which is purely to state that any rights he has in the property are postponed and secondary to Co-operative. This is solely used to protect Co-operative if the property were re-possessed so that in such circumstances, your son would be legally obliged to leave. It does not impact your son’s right to inherit the apartment. Please note that if your son were to inherit and the mortgage in favour of Co-operative had not been discharged, he would be liable to take over the loan or pay it off, but other than that, there is nothing stopping him from keeping the property in accordance with your will or the rules of intestacy.
Completed the sale of my flat in Honiton last June yet the purchaser is telephoning daily to moan that her conveyancer needs to hear from mine. What should my lawyer have done following completion?
Following your house sale your conveyancer should forward the transfer documentation and all of the paperwork to the buyer’s lawyers. If applicable, your conveyancer should also send confirmation that the mortgage has been repaid to the purchasers lawyers. There is unlikely to be post completion tasks just for conveyancing in Honiton.
A colleague advised me that if I am purchasing in Honiton I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?
This is a search is occasionally included in the estimate for your Honiton conveyancing searches. It is not a small report of more than thirty pages, listing and detailing important information about Honiton 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 demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime statistics, Local Education with plans and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data concerning Honiton.
Last October I purchased a leasehold flat in Honiton. Am I liable to pay service charges for periods before completion of my purchase?
Where the service charge has already been demanded from the previous owner and they have not paid you would not usually be personally liable for the arrears. However, your landlord may still be able to take action to forfeit the lease. It is an essential part of leasehold conveyancing for your conveyancer to be sure to have an up to date clear service charge receipt before completion of your purchase. If you have a mortgage this is likely to be a requirement of your lender.
If you purchase part way through an accounting year you may be liable for charges not yet demanded even if they relate to a period prior to your purchase. In such circumstances your conveyancer would normally arrange for the seller to set aside some money to cover their part of the period (usually called a service charge retention).
Honiton Leasehold Conveyancing - Sample of Queries Prior to buying
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Is there a share of the freehold? Most Honiton leasehold properties will be liable to pay a service bill for maintenance of the building set by the management company. Should you buy the property you will have to meet this contribution, normally quarterly throughout the year. This could vary from two or three hundred pounds to thousands of pounds for buildings with lifts and large common areas. In all probability there will be a ground rent to be met yearly, this is usually not a significant figure, say around £50-£100 but you need to check it because sometimes it could be many hundreds of pounds. How many of the leaseholders are in arrears for their service charge payments?
My financial adviser has suggested using their solicitor for my conveyancing in Honiton - Is it not simpler better to just use them?
It is worth checking if the selling agent is recommending a conveyancer or introducing to a lawyer. There are plenty of Honiton selling agents who recommend two or three Honiton conveyancing firms and get nothing from it.