My husband and I intend to remortgage our apartment in Pitstone with Skipton. 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 flat is repossessed. I have two concerns (1) Is this document specific to the Skipton conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we remortgaged 5 years ago (2) Does our son by signing this giving up his entitlement to inherit the property?

First, rest assured that your Skipton 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 Skipton. This is solely used to protect Skipton 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 Skipton 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 wife and I have recently appointed a conveyancing solicitor in Pitstone. I I would like to check if they are on the Barnsley Building Society approved list of lawyers. Can you help?

The first thing you should do is call the lawyer and ask them if they are on the lender panel. Otherwise please call Barnsley Building Society who may be able to assist.

I note that there are debates on Chancel Insurance on online forums. Do I need chancel insurance when acquiring a property in Pitstone? or Apparently there is a law dating back centuries that could mean that owners of property residing in a parish church boundary will be compelled to contribute towards maintenance to the chancel within the church. Is this suitable for conveyancing in Pitstone?

Unless a prior acquisition of the house completed post 12 October 2013 you can take it that conveyancing practitioners delivering conveyancing in Pitstone to remain recommending a chancel search and or insurance against a claim.

I was advised by a number of selling agents in Pitstone to find a conveyancer using your seach tool. What’s the financial inducement for Estate Agents to promote your services ahead of a competitor’s?

We don’t give any commission for sending work to this site. We found it would be just too difficult to pay a commission as members of the public would think, ‘Why is the agent getting a kickback? Why am I not getting any benefit too?’ So we decided to step away from that.

I am employed by a busy estate agent office in Pitstone where we have witnessed a number of leasehold sales put at risk due to short leases. I have been given contradictory information from local Pitstone conveyancing firms. Please can you confirm whether the owner of a flat can commence the lease extension formalities for the purchaser on completion of the sale?

Provided that the seller has owned the lease for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to kick-start the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. The benefit of this is that the buyer need not have to wait 2 years to extend their lease. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment has to be done prior to, or simultaneously with completion of the sale.

Alternatively, it may be possible to extend the lease informally by agreement with the landlord either before or after the sale. If you are informally negotiating there are no rules and so you cannot insist on the landlord agreeing to grant an extension or transferring the benefit of an agreement to the buyer.

Leasehold Conveyancing in Pitstone - Examples of Queries Prior to buying

Is the freehold reversion owned jointly by the tenants? It would be sensible to find out if there are any onerous restrictions in the lease. For example plenty of leases prohibit pets being allowed in certain buildings in Pitstone. If you love the flatin Pitstone however your dog can’t move with you then you have a very difficult choice. The majority of Pitstone leasehold properties will be liable to pay a service bill for maintenance of the building invoiced on behalf of the freeholder. Should you purchase the flat you will have to pay this contribution, usually quarterly throughout the year. This can differ from a few hundred pounds to thousands of pounds for large purpose-built buildings. In all probability there will be a rentcharge for you to pay yearly, this is usually not a large sum, say approximately £25-£75 but you need to check as occasionally it can be prohibitively expensive.