New Street Mortgages Conveyancing Panel Information

The requirements to join the New Street Mortgages conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

The concern here is if you are expect to enter into ‘more onerous’ conditions that than the Handbook obligations. You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the New Street Mortgages conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Conditions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before completing the answer.

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

There are various requirements you need to follow if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook. (I) You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as valued and the title and other documents which a reasonably competent conveyancer should obtain, and, if there are, you must tell New Street Mortgages immediately. (b) You should take reasonable steps to verify that the assumptions stated by the valuer about the title (for example, its tenure, easements, boundaries and restrictions on its use) in the valuation and as stated in New Street Mortgages’s mortgage offer are correct. If they are not, please let New Street Mortgages know as soon as possible as it will be necessary for New Street Mortgages to check with the valuer whether the valuation needs to be revised. New Street Mortgages conveyancing panel solicitors are not expected to assume the role of valuer. New Street Mortgages are simply trying to ensure that the valuer has valued the property based on correct information. (III) New Street Mortgages recommend that you should advise the borrower that there may be defects in the property which are not revealed by the inspection carried out by their valuer and there may be omissions or inaccuracies in the report which do not matter to them as a lender but which would matter to the borrower. New Street Mortgages recommend that, if we send a copy of a valuation report that New Street Mortgages have obtained, you should also advise the borrower that the borrower should not rely on the report in deciding whether to proceed with the purchase and that he obtains his own more detailed report on the condition and value of the property, based on a fuller inspection such as a homebuyers report or structural survey. If you do not receive a copy of the valuation you can always ask for a copy of one from New Street Mortgages or the borrower. You still need to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Requirement relating to valuation reports even if you don't receive one directly. Failure to comply not only runs the risk of facing a claim by the lender but also being removed from the New Street Mortgages conveyancing panel

In this situation please explain on the form what action you have taken to discover the reasons behind cancellation of your New Street Mortgages panel membership. In particular please provide details if you have received communications from the lender. E.G. before cessation of your panel membership did you receive any letters or calls from the lender putting you on notice?

You would be advised to get in touch with New Street Mortgages to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook incorporates an explicit section for lenders to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. New Street Mortgages in their Part 2’s state: It is likely that you will need to disclose your New Street Mortgages conveyancing panel reference.