How up to date is your database of Wednesbury solicitors on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel? Do Virgin Money send you an updated list?

Wednesbury conveyancing firms themselves provide us confirmation that they are on the Virgin Money conveyancing panel as opposed to being supplied with a list from Virgin Money directly.

My bid for a property was accepted at auction in Wednesbury. Conveyancing is necessary. What happens now?

Now that you have legally committed yourself to purchase you must find a conveyancing lawyer quickly as you are faced with a pending a drop dead date to complete the purchase. An auction property will ordinarily have an associated legal set of papers. This will likely include evidence of title and search results. If you have purchased leasehold property the legal pack should include a copy of the lease, management information and a sellers leasehold information form and associated conveyancing paperwork specific to a leasehold property. You must hand this to the solicitor working for you at the earliest opportunity. You also need to ensure that your finances are organised to complete the transaction on the set completion date.

This question may be naive but I am wet behind the ears as a 1st time buyer of a garden flat in Wednesbury. Do I collect the keys to the property on the completion date from my conveyancer? If so, I will use a High Street conveyancing solicitor in Wednesbury?

On the day of completion you do not need to attend the conveyancers office in Wednesbury. Your solicitors will arrange to send the completion advance to the seller's lawyers, and once they have received this, you will be invited to receive the keys from the Estate Agents and move into your new home. This tends to happen between 1 and 3pm.

Two weeks ago we had a mortgage agreed in principle with Barclays. Wednesbury conveyancing practitioners are chosen. What is the average time that one could expect to receive a mortgage offer from Barclays?

There is no definitive answer here. Have Barclays conducted the survey? Have you advised Barclays as to your lawyers' details and checked that your lawyers are on the Barclays conveyancing panel? It is not unusual for a mortgage offer to take a month to come through.

How does conveyancing in Wednesbury differ for newly converted properties?

Most buyers of new build or newly converted property in Wednesbury come to us having been asked by the housebuilder to sign contracts and commit to the purchase even before the premises is constructed. This is because builders in Wednesbury usually buy the site, plan the estate and want to get the plots sold off as they are building the properties. Buyers, therefore, will have to exchange contracts without actually seeing the house they are buying. To reduce the chances of losing the property, buyers should instruct conveyancers as soon as the property is reserved and mortgage applications should be submitted quickly. Due to the fact that it could be several months and even years between exchange of contracts and completion, the mortgage offer may need to be extended. It would be wise to use a lawyer who specialises in new build conveyancing especially if they are used to new build conveyancing in Wednesbury or who has acted in the same development.

I have been on the look out for a ground for flat up to £245,000 and identified one round the corner in Wednesbury I like with amenity areas and railway links nearby, however it only has 49 remaining years left on the lease. There is not much else in Wednesbury in this price bracket, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error purchasing a short lease?

Should you require a mortgage that many years will be a potential deal breaker. Reduce the price by the amount the lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the existing proprietor has owned the property for at least 2 years you can ask them to commence the lease extension formalities and pass it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the current lease and have £0 ground rent by law. You should speak to your conveyancing solicitor about this.

Having had my offer accepted I require leasehold conveyancing in Wednesbury. Before diving in I would like to find out the number of years remaining on the lease.

Assuming the lease is registered - and 99.9% are in Wednesbury - then the leasehold title will always include the basic details 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 inherited a ground floor flat in Wednesbury, conveyancing having been completed in 2001. 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? Similar flats in Wednesbury with a long lease are worth £222,000. The ground rent is £50 yearly. The lease comes to an end on 21st October 2096

With only 71 years unexpired we estimate the premium for your lease extension to be between £9,500 and £11,000 plus costs.

The suggested premium range above a general guide to costs for renewing a lease, but we cannot give you the actual costs without more detailed investigations. You should not use the figures in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There may be other issues that need to be considered and clearly you should be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. You should not move forward based on this information without first getting professional advice.