Holmesdale Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Holmesdale Building Society to take a much more pro-active approach in relation to the management and make up of their conveyancer panels. The knock on effect of this is that it is more likely that there will be a higher number of cases where a conveyancer is not on the Holmesdale Building Society panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Holmesdale Building Society have appointed a separate lawyer to act on their behalf where the new CML Part 3 requirements apply. Section 11.1 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Part 3 requires Holmesdale Building Society’s panel solicitor to ‘ ...transfer the mortgage advance directly to the Seller’s conveyancer. The Seller’s conveyancer must be required to hold the mortgage advance on the terms of the required undertaking. The example borrower’s conveyancer’s undertaking letter includes a specific example of the seller’s undertaking’. You should expect to be advised to received the mortgage advance directly from the conveyancing solicitors for Holmesdale Building Society. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Holmesdale Building Society’s solicitors to discharge any charges secured on the property and to send directly to them the executed transfer and any other documents required to enable us to effect registration. Please remember to carefully consider undertakings in accordance with your firm’s protocol and record them in your undertakings logg. Please remember that as well as this breach of this undertaking having regulatory and compliance implications it’s breach could also result in your firm being removed off the Holmesdale Building Society conveyancing panel.

Holmesdale Building Society approved panel lawyers have to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook instructions relating to Transfer of Equity. These are set out in Section 16.3. First, your firm must approve the form of Transfer of Equity (which should be in the Land Registry's standard form) and, if Holmesdale Building Society require, the deed of covenant on their behalf. You will need to check Holmesdale Building Society CML Part 2 conditions to see if Holmesdale Building Society have standard forms of transfer and deed of covenant. Please note that this requirement can change from one transaction to another so do check! Second,When drafting or approving a transfer, you should bear in mind that: although the transfer should state that it is subject to the mortgage (identified by date and parties), it need give no details of the terms of the mortgage; the transfer need not state the amount of the mortgage debt. If it does, the figure should include both principal and interest at the date of completion, which you must check ; there should be no statement that all interest has been paid to date. Further obligations are set out in the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook which have to be followed by all firms on the Holmesdale Building Society conveyancing panel

In this situation please clarify on the form what action you have taken to find out the reasons behind cancellation of your Holmesdale Building Society panel membership. In particular please provide details if you have received communications from the lender. E.G. before termination of your panel membership did you receive any letters or calls from the lender putting you on notice?

You should get in touch with Holmesdale Building Society to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook contains an explicit section for banks to establish who to contact to obtain standard documents. Holmesdale Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Please remember to disclose the firm’s Holmesdale Building Society solicitors panel reference.