My fiance and I are hoping to acquire a home in Swanland and are in fact using a Swanland conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our conveyancer has sent a preliminary report and documents to look through with a view to exchanging next week. Bank of Ireland have this afternoon contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Swanland conveyancer is not on their conveyancing panel. Is this a problem?
When purchasing a property with mortgage finance it is standard 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 Accreditation 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 lawyers to represent them. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Swanland lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it may delay matters as you have another set of people involved.
This question may be naive but I am new to the house moving as FTB of a ground floor flat in Swanland. Do I collect the keys to the premises on completion from my lawyer? If so, I will find a local conveyancing solicitor in Swanland?
There is no need to visit the lawyers office on the day of completion. Conveyancing lawyers for you will transfer the completion advance to the seller's solicitors, and shortly after the monies have arrived, you should be able to collect the keys from the selling Agents and start moving into the property. This tends to happen early afternoon.
is it true that all Swanland solicitor firms on the Skipton conveyancing panel are governed by the SRA?
As solicitors, in order to be on the Skipton conveyancing panel they would need to be governed by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. Some mortgage companies do allow licenced conveyancers on their panel and in that case the firms would be overseen by the Council of Licensed Conveyancers.
After much negotiation I have agreed a price on a house in Swanland. My financial adviser recommended their conveyancers. I paid an on account payment of £225. Not long after, the property lawyer called me to say that they were not on the UBS conveyancing panel. Am I right in thinking that I should be due a refund?
You should be able to recover this from the law firm if they were not on the UBS panel. They should have asked at the outset which lender you were obtaining a mortgage with. An important lesson to readers of this site is to check that the lawyers are on the appropriate lender panel.
A relative advised me that if I am purchasing in Swanland I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?
This is a search is usually included in the estimate for your Swanland conveyancing searches. It is not a small report of about 40 pages, listing and setting out important information about Swanland around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Swanland Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average House Prices, Crime statistics, Swanland Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about Swanland.
It has been five months since my purchase conveyancing in Swanland took place. I have checked the Land Registry website which shows that I paid £175,000 when infact I paid £170,000. Why the discrepancy?
The price paid figure is taken from the application to register the purchase. It is the figure included in the Transfer (the legal deed which transfers the property from one person to the other) and referred to as the 'consideration' or purchase price. You can report an error in the price paid figure using the LR online form. In most cases errors result from typos so at first glance the figure. Do report it so they can double check and advise.
Do I need to be suspicious about brokers that I am dealing with are suggesting a factory type conveyancing firm as opposed to a High Street Swanland conveyancing practice?
As with many service providers, often recommendations from relatives can be most helpful. But there are lots of parties with a vested interest in a conveyancing deal; estate agents, mortgage brokers and lenders may put forward conveyancers to retain. On occasion the solicitors might be known to one of the organisations as one of the best in their field, but occasionally there behind the scenes commercial relationship behind the endorsement. You have the discretion to appoint your preferred conveyancer. Don't forget that most lenders specify a panel list of lawyers you must use for the mortgage related work in your transaction.