My husband and I intend to remortgage our penthouse in Kirkby Stephen with Nationwide. We have a son approaching twenty who lives at home. Our solicitor requested us to identify any adults other than ourselves who reside at the property. Our lawyer has now e-mailed a document for our son to sign, giving up any rights in the event that the apartment is repossessed. I have two questions (1) Is this form unique to the Nationwide conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we purchased 5 years ago (2) In signing this form is our son in any way compromising his right to inherit the property?
First, rest assured that your Nationwide conveyancing panel solicitor is doing the right thing 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 Nationwide. This is solely used to protect Nationwide 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 Nationwide 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.
My apartment in Kirkby Stephen is up for sale and I have a buyer. Does the solicitor need to be on the UBS conveyancing panel in order to deal with the discharge of my mortgage?
Ordinarily, even if your lawyer is not on the UBS conveyancing panel they can still act for you on your sale. It might be that the lender will not release the original deeds (if applicable and increasingly irrelevant) until after the mortgage is paid off. You should speak to your lawyer directly before you start the process though to ensure that there is no problem as lenders are changing their specifications fairly frequently at the moment.
My friend advised me that if I am buying in Kirkby Stephen I should ask my conveyancer to carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?
A search of this type is occasionally included in the estimate for your Kirkby Stephen conveyancing searches. It is not a small report of more than thirty pages, listing and detailing significant information about Kirkby Stephen around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Kirkby Stephen Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime statistics, Kirkby Stephen Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data regarding Kirkby Stephen.
Yesterday I discovered that there is a flying freehold element on a house I put an offer in a fortnight ago in what was supposed to be a simple, no chain conveyancing. Kirkby Stephen is where the house is located. Is there any guidance you can impart?
Flying freeholds in Kirkby Stephen are rare but are more likely to exist in relation to terraced houses. Even though you don't necessarily need a conveyancing solicitor in Kirkby Stephen you would need to get your solicitor to go through the deeds very carefully. Your mortgage company may require your conveyancing solicitor to take out an indemnity policy. Some of the more diligent conveyancing solicitors in Kirkby Stephen may determine that this is not enough and that the deeds be re-written to give you the most up to date legal protection. If so, the next door neighbour also had to sign up to the revised deeds.It is possible that your lender will not accept the situation so the sooner you find out the better. You should also check with your insurance broker as to whether they will insure a flying freehold premises.
Am I better off to go with a Kirkby Stephen conveyancing solicitor based in the vicinity that I am buying? We have a good friend who can conduct the legal formalities but her office is 300kilometers drive away.
The primary upside of using a high street Kirkby Stephen conveyancing firm is that you can visit the firm to execute documents, hand in your ID and apply pressure on them where appropriate. They will also have local knowledge which is a plus. However nothing is more important than finding someone that will pull out all the stops for you. If you know people who instructed your friend and in the main were impressed that must surpass using an unknown Kirkby Stephen conveyancing lawyer solely due to them being Kirkby Stephen based.