My fiance and I changing mortgage lender for our penthouse in West Hill with UBS. We have a son 18 who lives at home. Our solicitor has asked us to disclose any adults other than ourselves who reside at the property. The solicitor has now sent a form for our son to sign, waiving any legal rights in the event that the property is repossessed. I have a couple of concerns (1) Is this form unique to the UBS conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we purchased 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 UBS. This is solely used to protect UBS 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 UBS 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 West Hill last August yet the purchaser is calling daily to say his solicitor is waiting to hear from mysolicitor. What are the post completion sale legalities now that I have sold?
Following your house sale your solicitor is obliged to send the transfer documentation and all of the paperwork to the buyer’s lawyers. Depending on the transaction, your lawyer must also send confirmation that the legal charge in favour of the lender has been redeemed to the buyers lawyers. There is unlikely to be post completion tasks unique to conveyancing in West Hill.
Is it necessary during the course of the conveyancing process to have a meeting at the offices of the solicitor to execute the legal charge? If so, I will instruct a firm who offer conveyancing in West Hill so that I can pop in to their offices if required.
Most conveyancing panel lawyers for banks conduct the vast majority of work through Royal Mail, internet or over phone calls. This enables them to carry out the legal work for your home move regardless of where you live in the country. That being said you can see if you have the option of visiting the offices of your conveyancing lawyer if needed.
Over the last few months I have been searching for a leasehold apartment up to £235,500 and identified one round the corner in West Hill I like with a park and railway links nearby, the downside is that it only has 49 years unexpired on the lease. There is not much else in West Hill for this price, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error buying a lease with such few years left?
Should you require a mortgage that many years will likely be a potential deal breaker. Discount the offer by the amount the lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the existing proprietor has owned the property for a minimum of twenty four months you may request that they start the process of the extension and then assign it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the current lease with a zero ground rent applied. You should speak to your conveyancing lawyer about this matter.
Am I better off to choose a West Hill conveyancing solicitor who is local to the property I am buying? We have a good friend who can deal with the legal formalities but they are based over three hundred miles drive away.
The benefit of a local West Hill conveyancing firm is that you can drop in to sign documents, present your ID and pester them if necessary. Having local West Hill know how is a bonus. That being said it's more important to get someone that will pull out all the stops for you. If you know people who used your friend and the majority were content that must surpass using an unknown West Hill conveyancing solicitor solely due to them being West Hill based.
Why do West Hill conveyancing costs are more expensive for leasehold and freehold properties?
If buying a leasehold property there is more work involved purely due to the fact that usually there are further parties involved in the form of the freeholder and/or Management Agents. As part of a lawyers enquiries they will check that all ground rent and service charges are paid up to date amongst other general leasehold matters. For this reason, the Sellers lawyers usually have to refer to the freeholder or Managing Agent for their replies to our questions. This may be time consuming and beyond the lawyers control