I am hoping to receive a offer of a home loan from Halifax. I hope to use a Licensed Conveyancer in Lee. Does the Halifax Conveyancing panel allow for Licensed Conveyancers?
The Halifax approved solicitor list is, like many other lenders, represented by the CML or BSA, open to Licensed Conveyancers regulated by the CLC.
Our son-in-law is about to exchange on a new build apartment in Lee with a home loan from Nottingham. His conveyancer has said that there is a delay in receiving the ‘Disclosure of Incentive Form’. What is this document - I have never come across this before?
The form is intended to provide information to the main parties engaged in the purchase. Therefore, it will be provided to your son’s lawyer who should be on the Nottingham conveyancing panel as a standard part of the process, and to the valuer when asked. The developer will be required to start the process by downloading the form and completing it. The form will therefore need to be available for the valuer at the time of his or her site visit. The form should be sent to the Nottingham conveyancing panel solicitor as early as possible, in order to avoid any last minute delays, and no later than at exchange of contracts.
Despite weeks of looking the Title Certificate and documents to my property can not be found. The conveyancers who handled the conveyancing in Lee 5 years ago no longer exist. Will I be able to sell the house?
Assuming you have a registered title the details of your proprietorship will be recorded by HMLR under a Title Number. It is possible to execute a search at the Land Registry, identify your property and secure up to date copies of the property title for a small fee. If the title is Leasehold then the Land Registry will in most cases hold a certified duplicate of the Registered Lease and again, a copy can be obtained for twenty pounds.
Last December I purchased a leasehold flat in Lee. Am I liable to pay service charges for periods before completion of my purchase?
Where the service charge has already been demanded from the previous owner and they have not paid you would not usually be personally liable for the arrears. Strange as it may seem, your landlord may still be able to take action to forfeit the lease. A critical element of leasehold conveyancing for your conveyancer to be sure to have an up to date clear service charge receipt before completion of your purchase. If you have a mortgage this is likely to be a requirement of your lender.
If you purchase part way through an accounting year you may be liable for charges not yet demanded even if they relate to a period prior to your purchase. In such circumstances your conveyancer would normally arrange for the seller to set aside some money to cover their part of the period (usually called a service charge retention).
Having spent years of correspondence we are unable to agree with our landlord on how much the lease extension should cost for our flat in Lee. Does the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal have jurisdiction to calculate the appropriate figures?
Most certainly. We are happy to put you in touch with a Lee conveyancing firm who can help.
An example of a Freehold Enfranchisement case for a Lee residence is 18 Handen Road in April 2013. On 26 October 2012 District Judge Zimmels sitting at the Lambeth County Court made a Vesting Order that the Applicants be granted the right to acquire the freehold upon such terms and at such price determined by the LVT. The Tribunal arrived a figure of £39,535 as a valuation for the enfranchisement. This case affected 3 flats. The unexpired residue of the current lease was 69.05 years.
I own a leasehold flat in Lee. Conveyancing was completed in last year. I have heard that I mustn’t allow the the remaining lease term to fall too low. What is the reasoning?
Lee leasehold properties are for a set period - usually just under one hundred years when they started. However a significant flats in Lee were constructed or converted 20 or more years ago and so such leases now have less than 80 years left to run. This may seem like plenty of time however Banks, Building Societies and other mortgage companies generally need leases to have a minimum of seventy five years unexpired to be mortgageable. This means that when you come to sell the property you will need to extend the term of your lease if you are getting close to eighty years. To maximise the saleability of your property you should be thinking about whether to extend your lease long before you come to sell it. There are also advantages to doing so before the lease reaches even eighty years as when the lease falls below eighty years the premium to be paid to extend starts to increase.