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approved by perenna

Perenna and other lenders tend to imposes restrictions either the type or the number of conveyancing solicitors on their approved list of lawyers. Typical examples 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 Perenna have no responsibility for the quality of advice provided by any member of Perenna 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.

You should not exchange unless you have advised to do so by your lawyer. A precondition to being on the Perenna approved panel is to comply with the CML Handbook requirements (last updated for this lender on Perenna). The CML Conveyancing Handbook requires that your lawyer have the appropriate Disclosure of Incentive form completed by the developer and accepted by your lender.

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 Perenna solicitor panel.

First, this is very unlikely to happen. In most cases even where a law firm is removed off of a panel the lender would allow the completion to go ahead as the lender would appreciate the difficulties that they would place you in if you have ti instruct a new solicitor days before completion. In a worst case scenario where the lender insists that you instruct a new firm then it is possible for a very good lawyer to expedite the conveyancing albeit that you may pay a significant premium for this. The analogous situation is where a buyer instructs a lawyer, exchanges contracts and the law firm is shut down by the regulator such as the SRA. Again, in this situation you can find lawyers who can troubleshoot their way to bring the conveyancing to a satisfactory conclusion - albeit at a cost.

Unfortunately, as long as it is in their Terms and Conditions or Quote then yes your solicitors can charge a fee for this. This fee is not set by Perenna but by your lawyers. Some firms on the Perenna will charge an ‘acting for lender’ fee but plenty of firms include it on their overall fee.

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

A limited percentage of Hendon conveyancing practices are on the Perenna conveyancing panel. 8 people a month use our search tool to search for a Hendon conveyancing solicitor on the on the Perenna list of approved conveyancing firms.