After months of negotiation I have agreed a price on an apartment in St Annes. My financial adviser recommended their conveyancers. I paid an upfront payment of £225. A few days later, the conveyancing practitioner contacted me sheepishly admitting that they were not on the HSBC 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 HSBC 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.
After shopping around on the internet I have found a St Annes conveyancing practitioner having made sure that they are on the Kent Reliance conveyancing panel. Does my lawyer arrange the survey of the property?
Kent Reliance will need an independent valuation of the property. Your lawyer will not arrange this. Usually Kent Reliance will appoint their own surveyor to do this, and you will have to pay for it. Remember that this is a valuation for mortgage purposes and not a survey. You may wish to consider appointing your own St Annes surveyor to carry out a survey or prepare a home buyers report on the property. It is up to you to satisfy yourself that the property is structurally sound before you buy it. If the survey or report reveals that building work is needed, you should tell your solicitor. You may wish to renegotiate with the seller.
Lloyds have agreed my mortgage in principle, my bid on a house in St Annes has been accepted, now what?
Your estate agent will need to be informed of your conveyancing practitioner's details (ensure that the conveyancers are on the lender’s panel). Call up Lloyds or the broker and finish off any relevant documentation. Lloyds will sellect a valuer who will get in touch with the selling agent or vendor to book an appointment. Once conducted (assuming no problems) it takes approximately a fortnight to receive the mortgage offer. Lloyds will issue the offer to you and your conveyancing practitioners. The transaction will then take it’s course according the nature and complexity of the conveyancing in St Annes.
A colleague recommended that where I am purchasing in St Annes I should 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 St Annes conveyancing searches. It is not a small report of about 40 pages, listing and setting out important information about St Annes around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the St Annes Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime details, Local Education with plans and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about St Annes.
The deeds to my house can not be found. The solicitors who handled the conveyancing in St Annes 5 years ago are no longer around. What do I do?
Gone are the days when you need to have the physical deeds to prove you own the land or property, as the Land Registry hold details of all registered land or property electronically.
Over the last few months I have been searching for a leasehold apartment up to £235,500 and identified one near me in St Annes I like with amenity areas and transport links in the vicinity, however it's only got 49 years unexpired on the lease. I can't really find anything else in St Annes for this price, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error buying a short lease?
Should you require a mortgage the remaining unexpired lease term may be problematic. Discount the price by the expected lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the existing owner has owned the premises for at least 2 years you could ask them to commence the lease extension formalities and then assign it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the current lease with a zero ground rent applied. You should consult your conveyancing solicitor about this.
My fiance and I may need to let out our St Annes garden flat for a while due to a new job. We instructed a St Annes conveyancing practice in 2001 but they have closed and we did not have the foresight to get any guidance as to whether the lease allows us to sublet. How do we find out?
A small minority of properties in St Annes do contain a provision to say that subletting is only allowed with permission. The landlord cannot unreasonably withhold but, in such cases, they would need to review references. Experience suggests that problems are usually caused by unsatisfactory tenants rather than owner-occupiers and for that reason you can expect the freeholder to take up the references and consider them carefully before granting permission.
I am the registered owner of a ground floor flat in St Annes, conveyancing was carried out May 1997. Can you work out an approximate cost of a lease extension? Similar flats in St Annes with over 90 years remaining are worth £179,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £65 invoiced every year. The lease finishes on 21st October 2083
You have 57 years unexpired we estimate the price of your lease extension to range between £26,600 and £30,800 as well as legals.
The suggested premium range that we have given is a general guide to costs for renewing a lease, but we are not able to advice on the actual costs in the absence of comprehensive investigations. Do not use this information in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There may be additional concerns that need to be considered and you obviously want to be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. Neither should you move forward placing reliance on this information without first seeking the advice of a professional.