My husband and I are planning to purchase a flat in Theale and have appointed a Theale conveyancing firm. Within the past 48 hours our property lawyer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with a view to exchanging next week. Clydesdale have this evening contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Theale solicitor is not on their approved list of lawyers. Is this a problem?

Where you are buying a property with the assistance of a mortgage it is usual for the purchasers' solicitors to also represent the purchaser's lender. 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 lender and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own lawyers to represent them. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the bank's conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Theale solicitors, in which case it will likely add costs, and it may delay matters as you have another set of people involved.

I am being told by my lawyer that lack of right of way insurance is required on my purchase. What is the typical level of cover needed for conveyancing in Theale?

The right level of lack of right of way indemnity insurance should be dictated by who your lender. It would differ for example between HSBC Bank and Coventry Building Society. Conveyancing lawyers as opposed to members of the public take out such policies.

Are all Theale Conveyancing Quality Solicitors on the Leeds Building Society conveyancing list of approved solicitors?

Some major lenders now utilise the accreditation scheme as the kick off point for Panel approval such as HSBC and Santander. CQS accreditation however gives no guarantee to lender panel acceptance. Nevertheless,the Council of Mortgage Lenders have indicated that it is likely to become a pre-requisite for firms wishing to remain on their approved list of firms.

I recently had an offer agreed on an apartment in Theale. My financial adviser suggested a conveyancer. I paid an advanced payment of £225. A few days later, the solicitor called me sheepishly admitting that they were not on the Leeds Building Society 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 Leeds Building Society 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.

My colleague suggested that if I am purchasing in Theale I should ask my conveyancer to perform a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?

This is a search is occasionally included in the estimate for your Theale conveyancing searches. It is a large document of about 40 pages, listing and setting out important information about Theale 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, Theale Education with plans and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data concerning Theale.

I am purchasing my first flat in Theale benefiting from help to buy. The builders refused to budge the amount so I negotiated £7000 of fixtures and fittings instead. The sale representative suggested that I not disclose to my conveyancer about the deal as it could impact my loan with the lender. Is this normal?.

All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the developer of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.

Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.

Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.

I am in need of some leasehold conveyancing in Theale. Before I get started I would like to find out the number of years remaining on the lease.

If the lease is registered - and almost all are in Theale - then the leasehold title will always include the short particulars of the lease, namely the date; the term; and the original parties. From a conveyancing perspective such details then enable any prospective buyer and lender to confirm that any lease they are looking at is the one relevant to that title. For any other purpose, such as confirming how long the term was granted for and calculating what is left, then the register should be sufficient on it's own.

I purchased a 1st floor flat in Theale, conveyancing was carried out half a dozen years ago. Can you let me have an estimate of the premium that my landlord can legally expect in return for granting a renewal of my lease? Equivalent properties in Theale with a long lease are worth £227,000. The ground rent is £50 invoiced annually. The lease ends on 21st October 2097

You have 71 years left to run we estimate the premium for your lease extension to span between £9,500 and £11,000 plus plus your own and the landlord's "reasonable" professional fees.

The suggested premium range above a general guide to costs for extending a lease, but we are not able to provide a more accurate figure in the absence of detailed investigations. Do not use the figures in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There may be additional concerns that need to be taken into account and you obviously want to be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. Neither should you move forward placing reliance on this information before getting professional advice.