My wife and I are looking to buy a flat in St Neots and have instructed a St Neots conveyancing practice. Within the last couple of days our solicitor has sent a preliminary report and documents to look through in anticipation of exchanging contracts shortly. Yorkshire Building Society have this evening contacted us to inform me that they have now hit a problem as our St Neots solicitor is not on their approved list of lawyers. Please explain?
Where you are buying a property requiring a mortgage it is normal for the purchasers' lawyers to also represent 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 Quality Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your bank and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own solicitors to act. You don't have to instruct a firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own St Neots solicitors, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you are adding another lawyer into the mix.
My husband and I swapping mortgage lender for our maisonette in St Neots with RBS. We have a son 18 who lives at home. Our solicitor has asked us to disclose anyone over the age of 17 other than ourselves who lives in the flat. The solicitor has now sent a form for our son to sign, giving up any rights in the event that the apartment is forfeited by the lender. I have a couple of concerns (1) Is this form unique to the RBS conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we bought 4 years ago (2) In signing this form is our son in any way compromising his right to inherit the property?
On the face of it your lawyer has done nothing wrong 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 RBS. This is solely used to protect RBS 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 RBS 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.
Finally the sale completed on my house in St Neots last September yet the purchaser is telephoning every few hours to say their lawyer is waiting to hear from myconveyancer. What are the post completion sale legalities now that I have sold?
After completion of your house sale your conveyancer should send the transfer documentation and all of the paperwork to the buyer’s solicitors. Depending on the transaction, your solicitor should also evidence that the legal charge in favour of the lender has been discharged to the purchasers conveyancers. There is unlikely to be post completion procedures peculiar conveyancing in St Neots.
The estate agent has sent us the confirmation of our purchase of a new build flat in St Neots. Conveyancing is daunting 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 conveyancing.
Set out below are examples of a few leasehold new build enquiries that you should expect your new-build leasehold conveyancing in St Neots
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Will the freehold then be transferred for a nominal consideration (not exceeding £100) to the Management Company? 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. There must be mutual enforceability of lessee’s covenants. Has the Lease plan been approved by the Land Registry and if not when will they be lodged for this purpose? Forfeiture - bankruptcy or liquidation must not apply under this provision.
Due to the encouragement of my in-laws I had a survey completed on a house in St Neots ahead of instructing solicitors. I have been advised that there is a flying freehold element to the property. Our surveyor has said that some banks may refuse to grant a loan on this type of home.
It depends who your proposed lender is. Santander has different instructions from Halifax. Should you wish to telephone us we can look into this further via the relevant bank. If you lender is happy to lend one our lawyers can assist as they are accustomed to dealing with flying freeholds in St Neots. Conveyancing can be more complicated and therefore you should check with your conveyancing solicitor in St Neots to see if the conveyancing costs will increase in light of this.
I am looking into buying my first house which is in St Neots and I am already nervous. I couldn't find anything specific about St Neots. Conveyancing will be needed in due course but do you know about the St Neots area? or perhaps some other tips you can share?
Rather than looking online forget looking online you should go and have a look at St Neots. In the meantime here are some basic statistics that we found