Magellan Homeloans Conveyancing Panel Information

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Average time frame to send deeds to the lender (calculated from completion date or title registration)
• Evidence of undertaking logs
• Average time frame to register charges at the Land Registry
• Average mortgage advance
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g.existing/new/seen in person)

When a solicitor is acting for both Magellan Homeloans and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent. In the situation you find yourself in if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender the solicitor must cease to act for the Magellan Homeloans and it may well be prudent you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You can not tell the Magellan Homeloans the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your Magellan Homeloans conveyancing panel status.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Magellan Homeloans 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 Magellan Homeloans panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Magellan Homeloans 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 Magellan Homeloans’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 Magellan Homeloans. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Magellan Homeloans’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 Magellan Homeloans conveyancing panel.

With lenders and property lawyers working so closely together it is surprising that there has not been much call for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the Magellan Homeloans conveyancing panel but for all lender panel listings

In this situation please clarify on the form what steps you have taken to discover the reasons behind cancellation of your Magellan Homeloans panel membership. In particular please provide details if you have received communications from the lender. E.G. before revocation of your panel membership did you receive any letters or calls from the lender putting you on notice?

You need to communicate with Magellan Homeloans to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook includes an explicit inquiry for lenders to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. Magellan Homeloans in their Part 2’s state: Don’t forget to disclose your Magellan Homeloans solicitors panel number.