My partner and I intend to remortgage our maisonette in Ealing with Santander. We have a son 18 who lives at home. Our solicitor has asked us to disclose anyone over the age of 17 other than ourselves who reside at the property. The solicitor has now sent a form for our son to sign, giving up any rights in the event that the property is forfeited by the lender. I have two concerns (1) Is this form unique to the Santander conveyancing panel as he never had to sign this form when we bought 5 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 Santander. This is solely used to protect Santander 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 Santander 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.

It is 10 years ago since I bought my house in Ealing. Conveyancing lawyers have recently been appointed on the sale but I am unable to track down my deeds. Is this a problem?

You need not be too concerned. Firstly there is a chance that the deeds will be with the lender or they may be in the possession of the conveyancers who oversaw your purchase. Secondly the likelihood is that the land will be recorded at the land registry and you will be able to prove you own the property by your conveyancing solicitors acquiring current official copies of the land registers. Nearly all conveyancing in Ealing relates to registered property but in the unlikely event that your property is unregistered it is more tricky but is not insurmountable.

I had intended to instruct a conveyancing solicitor in Ealing for our house purchase. Our financial adviser informed us that our bank Aldermore won't deal with them. Why is this not regarded as unduly restrictive?

A mortgage company may require a panel conveyancer act for it. You would be expected to meet the charges for this. Please make use of our database to select a solicitor to carry conveyancing in Ealing on the Aldermore approved list of solicitors.

I am buying a new build house in Ealing with a loan from Bank of Scotland. The builders refused to budge the price so I negotiated 6k of extras instead. The estate agent advised me not inform my solicitor about this side-deal as it could adversely affect my loan with the lender. Is this normal?.

All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the builder of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.

Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.

Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.

I am looking into buying my first house which is in Ealing and I am already nervous. I couldn't find anything specific about Ealing. Conveyancing will be needed in due course but do you know about the Ealing area? or perhaps some other tips you can share?

Rather than looking online forget looking online you should go and have a look at Ealing. In the meantime here are some basic statistics that we found