My wife and I are acquiring a new build apartment in Pitsea and my solicitor is telling me that she is duty bound to the bank to reveal incentives from the builder. I am under pressure to exchange and I have no desire to delay deal. Is my lawyer right?
You should not exchange unless you have been advised to do so by your conveyancing practitioner. A precondition to being on a mortgage company panel is to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook provisions. 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 planning to move home in October. Will my conveyancing solicitor liaise with the removal company on the day of completion. As an aside, can you put forward a removal company in Pitsea. Conveyancing lawyer was found before I stumbled across your site.
On the day of completion you will need to pick up the keys from the property agent however this should only occur after the sellers solicitors advise the agent that they acknowledge receipt of the completion payment and the keys can be collected. After that you will need to tell the removal company that you are ready to move in. As a matter of policy we do not recommend a particular removal organisation but can assist you in locating a conveyancing in Pitsea or a lawyer that specialises in conveyancing in Pitsea.
I'm the only recipient of my late grandmother’s estate with all property in now in my sole name, including the house in Pitsea. The Pitsea property was put into my name in June. I now wish to sell up. I understand that there is a Mortgage Lenders 6 month 'rule', meaning my property ownership may be treated the same way as though I had purchased the property in June. Will no one buy the property for half a year?
The Council of Mortgage Lenders’ handbook instructs conveyancers to: "report to us immediately if the owner or registered proprietor has been registered for less than six months." By the strict wording you could be affected by that. Some banks would take a sensible view as this clause principally exists to pick up on subsales or the flipping of property.
I recently had an offer agreed on an apartment in Pitsea. My mortgage broker pressured me to appoint their solicitor. I paid an on account payment of £150. A couple of days later, the property lawyer called me embarrassingly acknowledging that they were not on the Barclays 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 Barclays 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 used Wolstenholmes several years past for my conveyancing in Pitsea. I now require my file however cannot find the solicitor. What do I do?
You should contact the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) to assist in tracing your conveyancing files. They can be contacted on please contact on 0870 606 2555. Alternatively, you should use their online form to make an enquiry. You will need to provide the SRA with as much information as possible to assist their search, including the name and address in Pitsea of the conveyancing firm of solicitors you previously hired, the name of conveyancing solicitor with whom you had dealings, and the date on which you last had dealings with the firm.
I am buying a new build flat in Pitsea. Conveyancing is a frightening process at the best of times but I have never purchased a new build flat before. Can you give me some examples of some of the questions asked in new build legal work.
Here is a sample of a selection of leasehold new build questions that you may expect your new-build leasehold conveyancing in Pitsea
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Will control of the Management Company (if any) be handed over to purchasers on completion of the last sale or earlier? There must be mutual enforceability of lessee’s covenants. Where service of notices and proceedings can be at the property demised please confirm that this can be amended to include simultaneous services at the Lessees’ solicitors’ offices where the Lessee from time to time is not resident in the UK - such solicitors may be varied by notice in writing to the Landlord from time to time but otherwise will be as previously specified. If there are lifts in the building, please confirm that the owners of flats on the ground and basement floors will not be required to contribute towards the cost of maintenance and renewal.
I am looking for a ground for flat up to £305k and found one close by in Pitsea I like with a park and station in the vicinity, however it only has 51 remaining years left on the lease. I can't really find anything else in Pitsea in this price bracket, so just wondered if I would be making a mistake acquiring a short lease?
Should you need a mortgage the shortness of the lease may be problematic. Discount the price by the expected lease extension will cost if it has not already been discounted. If the current proprietor has owned the premises for a minimum of twenty four months you can ask them to commence the lease extension formalities and pass it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the current lease term and have £0 ground rent by law. You should consult your conveyancing lawyer regarding this.
I am a negotiator for a busy estate agent office in Pitsea where we have witnessed a number of flat sales put at risk due to leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received inconsistent advice from local Pitsea conveyancing firms. Please can you shed some light as to whether the vendor of a flat can commence the lease extension formalities for the buyer?
Provided that the seller has owned the lease for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to commence the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. The benefit of this is that the proposed purchaser need not have to sit tight for 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed before, or at the same time as completion of the sale.
An alternative approach is to agree the lease extension with the freeholder 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.
Pitsea Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Questions you should ask Prior to Purchasing
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Best to be warned whether changing the roof or some other major work is due in the foreseeable future that will be shared by the leasehold owners and will materially increase the the service costs or necessitate a specific payment. Are any of leasehold owners in dispute over their service charge liability? Is there a share of the freehold?