Find a Lawyer on the Godiva Mortgages Ltd Conveyancing Panel

Feel free to make use of the find a conveyancing panel tool on this page. Please choose the lender and your location and you will see a number of lawyer located nearest you. Alternatively you can type in the name of your proposed law firm and see if they are listed as being on the Godiva Mortgages solicitor panel.

Our service is a directory service for firms who wish to be listed as being on the approved conveyancing panel for Godiva Mortgages. We don’t recommend any particular firm.

The law firms listed on our site have advised us that they are on the Godiva Mortgages panel and agreed to advise us to take down their listing in the event of removal off of the Godiva Mortgages panel. To date we have not been informed by either a lender or a member of the public that the data about a specific firm being on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel is incorrect.

Not all firms are yet listed on our lender panel search tool which is still relatively new. Law firms are listing on a daily basis and it is probably the case that your lawyer is on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing lawyer and you should probably take them at their word. Please do feel free to suggest that they completing their listing on our site as it would only cost them £1 a month to list themselves as being on the Godiva Mortgages solicitor panel.

No. There is no UK Finance Part 2 or Building Society Association requirement relating to online case tracking. Some law firms operate such technology and some don't.

The firms themselves provide us confirmation that they are on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel as opposed to being supplied with a list from Godiva Mortgages directly.

It is true that some banks and building societies now use the accreditation scheme as the starting point for Panel membership such as HSBC and Santander. CQS membership however gives no guarantee to lender panel acceptance. That being said, UK Finance have indicated that it is likely to become a pre-requisite for firms wishing to join their panels.

No. There is no such tool on the UK Finance or Building Society Association websites. Very few lenders make their panel listings available online.

Godiva Mortgages will only instruct licensed conveyancers or solicitor firms that are on their conveyancing panel. If you want your solicitor firm to be admitted onto the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel, they must apply to Godiva Mortgages directly and meet the lender's panel criteria.

Many lenders operate a restricted conveyancing panel, while others allow any solicitor to join so long as they meet the lender's criteria. Each lender sets its own requirements. For example, the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel requirements differ from those of other lenders.

Some lenders take longer than others. Have Godiva Mortgages done the valuation? Have you advised Godiva Mortgages as your lawyers details and checked that your lawyer is on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel? It is not unusual for a mortgage offer to take a month to come through

As you are obtaining a mortgage with Godiva Mortgages your lawyer must to check the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing instructions contained in the Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook for Godiva Mortgages. The UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook contains minimum requirements for solar panel roof-space leases, and solicitors are required to report to Godiva Mortgages where a lease does not meet these requirements. The requirements relate to the installation of panels on properties in England and Wales. UK Finance are developing guidance for Northern Ireland and Scotland.

If you are getting a mortgage with Godiva Mortgages involved you will need to appoint a solicitor on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel. We would not encourage you to both use the same solicitors' firm. There are clear conflict of interest issues and it's not going to make a huge difference to the speed of the overall process. So as not to hold things us you should pass on your solicitors details to Godiva Mortgages. Feel free to use our search tool to look for a licensed conveyancer or solicitor on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel.

Where information comes to Godiva Mortgages 's attention regarding the customers or the security that they were not aware of prior to offer that affects their original decision to lend

You will need to appoint solicitors independently although you'll need to choose one on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel. The solicitor represents both you and the Godiva Mortgages through the process.

Ask Godiva Mortgages for conveyancing panel firms in your area. Lenders have them all over the country. You can also use our search tool at the top of this page to search for a lawyer on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel based on location. If you particularly like the sound of one of the local lawyers that you have spoken to ask them if they would go onto Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel as it may only take about 2-3 weeks. As long as they meet Godiva Mortgages's requirements it can be a very simple job for the solicitor. Other stuff will be going on in parallel (as you are at an early stage) so it may not delay matters.

If you have finished paying off your Godiva Mortgages mortgage they may send you evidence showing that you have paid it off. Alternatively they may notify the Land Registry directly. The Land Registry need to see this evidence before they will remove the Godiva Mortgages mortgage from the register. Godiva Mortgages,and any evidence they send you, will determine the action you need to take. In cases where no conveyancer is acting for you and you have paid off your mortgage: but are not moving to another property where the Godiva Mortgages has sent the Land Registry the discharge electronically, and the Godiva Mortgages has instructed the Land Registry to do so The Land Registry will send you a letter confirming that your Godiva Mortgages mortgage has been paid off.

Godiva Mortgages must be informed of your intention before renting your property as this is likely to be a breach of Godiva Mortgages's mortgage conditions. In many cases banks or building societies will allow you to rent out your former home without needing to switch to a buy-to-let mortgage but some lenders will add a surcharge to your mortgage rate to reflect the higher risk. You should contact Godiva Mortgages directly. It should not be necessary to do this via a Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel solicitor.

All banks and building societies have complaints procedures. Your first point of contact should be one of the Godiva Mortgages branches or the Customer Services Department at Godiva Mortgages head office. We understand that complaints to Godiva Mortgages are sorted out very quickly. If you feel that the matter is not resolved you can write to the Financial Ombudsman Service at South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London E14 9SR with full details of your complaint.

There is little point in complaining directly to Godiva Mortgages. All solicitors and conveyancer must have a complaints procedure. You can get information from the solicitor's or conveyancer's website or ask at their office. They must tell you about it if you ask.

The Legal Ombudsman will make sure that your complaint is properly dealt with by the solicitor. It can also advise you how to complain.

If a licensed conveyancer does not have a complaints procedure or will not tell you about it, contact the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), which will make sure that your complaint is properly dealt with by the conveyancer. Please see below for more information.

You should be able to recover this from the law firm if they were not on the Godiva Mortgages 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.

They are simply saying that the cost for acting for the lender is included in the fee being quoted. It is worth you checking that they are on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel

Mortgage companies tend not to not issue an offer until they have details of a lawyer on their panel. It can take a few weeks for Godiva Mortgages to deal with your lawyers application to be on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel. There's no guarantee that your solicitors will be accepted.

Godiva Mortgages will need an independent valuation of the property. Your lawyer will not arrange this. Usually Godiva Mortgages 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 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. or Your lawyer will not organise the survey but they may be able to put you in touch with a local one that they recommend. RICS offers a find a surveyor service (just google it) where you can search for a qualified surveyor by postcode. As you are getting a mortgage with Godiva Mortgages you could contact your them to see if they have a list of approved surveyors.

In terms of the Godiva Mortgages mortgage, it is unusual that your ex-wife's name remains on the mortgage but not on the title. It is conceivable that this is an oversight on the part of your conveyancers to ensure that her name was removed or even an administrative error on the part of Godiva Mortgages in failing to update their data. In any event, it should cause difficulty providing her name no longer appears on the Land Registry title and you have a court order ordering that the property is transferred to you.

The estate agent will want to know who your solicitors are (make sure these solicitors are on the lenders panel). Call up Godiva Mortgages or your broker and complete any relevant paperwork. Godiva Mortgages will tell you what documents they want. Godiva Mortgages will instruct a valuer. The valuer will get in touch with the estate agent or seller to book an appointment. Once conducted (assuming no problems) it takes about week to get a mortgage offer. Godiva Mortgages will issue the offer to you and your lawyer. The transaction will then take it's course according the nature and complexity of the conveyancing.

Not all your area conveyancing firms are on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel. Use the above search tool to locate a your area conveyancing firm on the on the Godiva Mortgages panel.

Leaving aside the complexities and merits of DIY conveyancing you will have to appoint a solicitor on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel to look after their interests. Most people therefore find it easier to let the solicitor act for them and the lender. Furthermore there is minimal cost savings to made in you doing to conveyancing for yourself and another lawyer conducting the conveyancing for the lender. Please feel free to use the search tool to find a lawyer on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel in your location.

There is nothing to stop you using your solicitor but Godiva Mortgages will insist on their interests being represented by a firm on their conveyancing panel. There is much more potential for delays and confusion with two solicitors involved, and it will undoubtedly be more expensive too.

Ordinarily, even if your lawyer is not on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel they can still act for you on your sale. it might be that the lender will not release the original deeds (if applicable and increasingly irrelevant) until after the mortgage is paid off. You should speak to your lawyer directly before you start the process though to ensure that there is no problem as lenders are changing their requirements fairly frequently at the moment.

You can use any solicitor you like but Godiva Mortgages then has the right to appoint a different solicitor to act for them at your expense. It might be more cost effective and quicker to instruct a lawyer who is on the Godiva Mortgages solicitors panel

The fact that your lawyer is on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel is a help. It would almost certainly delay matters if they were not. However, no conveyancer should guarantee a time-frame for your conveyancing due to third parties outside of our control such as delays caused by lenders,conveyancing search providers or by the other side's solicitors. The time taken is often determined by the number of parties in a chain

This is a rare situation indeed. The majority of lender Terms of Conveyancing Panel Appointment specifically oblige the solicitor to inform the lender of an address change. Your solicitor needs to treat this with the utmost urgency. Do speak with or register your concern with the senior partner (assuming he or she is not your direct lawyer). Most lenders would be reasonable in this situation and expedite the resolution of this issue. It may be prudent to enlist the help of your local Godiva Mortgages branch or your mortgage broker to see if they can assist.

The most common options here are as follows:

1. Complete the purchase with your existing solicitors but Godiva Mortgages will need to instruct a lawyer on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel. This will result in additional cost and potential delay.
2. Get a new solicitor to act in the purchase, obviously checking they are on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel.
3. Urge your lawyer to apply to join the Godiva Mortgages lender panel

Godiva Mortgages and other lenders normally restrict either the type or the number of conveyancing firms on their panel. A common example of such restriction(s) being that a firm must have two or more partners. In addition to restricting the type of firm, some have decided to limit the number of firms they use to represent them. You should note that Godiva Mortgages have no responsibility for the quality of advice provided by any member of Godiva Mortgages Conveyancer Panel. Mortgage fraud was a key driver in the rationalisation of conveyancing panels a few years ago and whilst there are differing views about the extent of solicitor involvement in some of that fraud. Statistics from the Land Registry reveal that thousands of law firms only carry out one or two conveyances a year. Those supporting conveyancing panel cuts ask why law firms should have the right to be on a Lender panel when clearly, Conveyancing is not their speciality? To put it another way; would you want a conveyancing solicitor to represent you if you were charged with a crime; probably not.

Lenders have always had panels of law firms they are willing to work with, but in the past few years big names such as Santander, have reviewed and reduced their conveyancing panel– in some cases removing conveyancing firms who have worked with them for more than 25 years.

Lenders blame a rise in fraud as the reason for the cull – criteria have been tightened and a smaller panel should be easier to keep an eye on. No lender will say how many solicitors have been dropped, claiming the information is commercially sensitive, but the Law Society says it is hearing daily from firms that have been removed from panels, or have other concerns about them. Some do not even realise they have been dropped until contacted by a borrower who has instructed them as might be the situation in your buyer's case. Your purchasers are unlikely to have any sway in the decision.

That would more than likely be a wrong assumption to make. There are all sorts of perfectly reasonable explanations. A recent report by the solicitors regulator indicated 76% of law firms surveyed had been removed from at least one lender panel. The most common reasons for removal are: (1) lack of transactions (2) the lawyer is a sole practitioner (3) as part of the HSBC panel reduction (4) regulatory contact by SRA (5) accidental removal. If you are concerned you should simply call the firm and ask them why they are no longer on the approved list for Godiva Mortgages.

You are best placed to get this information from your conveyancing lawyer. They should have a central record lender panel numbers including the Godiva Mortgages panel reference.

Godiva Mortgages's conveyancing panel is, like many other lenders associated to the Council or Mortgage Lenders or BSA, open to Licensed Conveyancers regulated by the CLC.

A survey recently commissioned by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority found that three quarters of law firms had been removed from a lender panel. The top reasons in order are:

1. lack of transactions
2. the lawyer is a sole practitioner
3. as part of the HSBC panel reduction
4. regulatory contact by SRA
5. accidental removal. We are not aware of the specific or common criteria for removal by Godiva Mortgages

If you haven't yet instructed a solicitor to do anything for you and have just received quotes, you're perfectly free to choose a different solicitor to carry out your work for you. The best way is to get recommendations from friends or family who have actually used the solicitor or conveyancer you're considering.

Godiva Mortgages's conveyancing panel is pretty large so your best bet is just to check with the firms you are getting quotes from whether they are on it. You can search by postcode on the search tool on this site to find solicitors that Godiva Mortgages will allow to act for them.

Anti-terror and anti-money-laundering rules require solicitors and licensed conveyancers to verify the identity of the person or body they are dealing with before they can accept their conveyancing business. The Terms and Conditions that you need to sign will no doubt confirm this. Your lawyer is right that Godiva Mortgages also require certain documents to be viewed. If a you refuse to provide ID verification documents, your conveyancer would not be able to accept instructions from you. Your lawyer also has obligations to obtain certain documents in accordance with Godiva Mortgages UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook requirements last updated on Godiva Mortgages

The short answer to your last question is that, notwithstanding the potential for a conflict of interest, you and Godiva Mortgages are the client. A precondition to being on the Godiva Mortgages approved panel is to comply with the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook requirements (last updated for this lender on Godiva Mortgages). The UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook conditions require your lawyer to disclose issues such as defects will the lease so that Godiva Mortgages can be afforded the opportunity to check with their valuer as to the extent that the value of the property is affected. Should you refuse to allow your lawyer to make the appropriate notification then your lawyer will have no choice but to discontinue acting for you.

A precondition to being on the Godiva Mortgages approved panel is to comply with the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook requirements (last updated for this lender on Godiva Mortgages) which do require that your lawyer disclose any incorrect assumptions in the lender's valuation report and the legal papers. Should you refuse to allow your lawyer to make the appropriate notification then your lawyer will have no choice but to discontinue acting for you.

One of the many conditions to being on the Godiva Mortgages approved panel is to comply with the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook requirements (last updated for this lender on Godiva Mortgages)which states that a local authority search be not more than 6 months old. You should nevertheless ask your lawyer to check whether something called 'search validation' indemnity insurance is acceptable to Godiva Mortgages.

Your lawyer is obliged to check with Godiva Mortgages to make sure that they are aware that the balance of the purchase price is not from your own funds. Your solicitor can only report this to Godiva Mortgages if you agree, failing which, your lawyer must cease to continue acting.

First, rest assured that your Godiva Mortgages 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 Godiva Mortgages.This is solely used to protect the Godiva Mortgages 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 Godiva Mortgages 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.

Your lawyer being on the Godiva Mortgages conveyancing panel is duty bound to inform Godiva Mortgages of any changes to the purchase price. If you were to refuse your lawyers to disclose the reduction to Godiva Mortgages then they would have to discontinue acting for you and Godiva Mortgages.