My wife and I are looking to acquire a home in St Johns and have instructed a St Johns conveyancing firm. Within the last couple of days our conveyancer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report in anticipation of exchanging contracts shortly. National Westminster Bank have this evening contacted us to inform me that there is now an issue as our St Johns lawyer is not on their conveyancing panel. Is this a problem?
Where you are buying a property needing a mortgage it is conventional for the purchasers' lawyers to also represent the mortgage company. In order to act for a bank or building society a law firm has to be on that lender's conveyancing panel. An application has to be made by the law firm to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the firm has to satisfy and indeed some lenders now require their panel members to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your mortgage company and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own solicitors to act. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred St Johns lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it may delay matters as you are adding another lawyer into the mix.
My lawyer in St Johns has never been on on the TSB Solicitor Panel. Can I still continue with my prefered solicitor even though they are not on the TSB list of approved lawyers?
Your options are as follows:
- Complete the purchase with your preferred St Johns solicitors but TSB will need to use a lawyer on their panel. This will inevitably rack up the overall conveyancing fees and result in frustration.
- Choose a new lawyer to to deal with the purchase, obviously checking they are TSB approved.
- Persuade your TSB solicitor to seek to join the TSB panel
A relative recommended that if I am buying in St Johns I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. What does it cover?
A search of this type is usually quoted for as part of the standard St Johns conveyancing searches. It is a large report of more than thirty pages, listing and detailing significant information about St Johns around the property and the people living there. It incorporates an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the local Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime statistics, St Johns Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data concerning St Johns.
Just bought a semi-detached house in St Johns , What is the estimated time for the Land Registry to record my title? My St Johns conveyancing solicitor has been very slow, so I want to check that my ownership is registered.
As far as conveyancing in St Johns is concerned, registration is no faster or slower than the rest of the country. As opposed to being determined by geographic area, timescales can adjust according to who lodges the application, whether there are errors and whether the Land registry communicate with any interested parties. Currently roughly 80% of such applications are fully dealt with in less than three weeks but occasionally there can be extensive delays. Historically registration is effected after the buyer is living at the property thus post completion formalities is not usually an essential issue yet if it is urgent that the the registration takes place urgently then you or your conveyancer must communicate with the Registry to express the reasoning for an expedited registration.
I need to appoint a conveyancing solicitor for freehold conveyancing in St Johns. I've stumble across a site which looks to be the perfect answer If there is a chance to get all this stuff completed via web that would be ideal. Should I be concerned? What are the potential pitfalls?
As usual with these online conveyancers you need to read ALL the small print - did you notice the extra charge for dealing with the mortgage?