My wife and I are planning to acquire a house in Camberley and have instructed a Camberley conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our lawyer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with the expectation that exchange is imminent. Leeds Building Society have this afternoon contacted us to inform me that there is now an issue as our Camberley lawyer is not on their approved list of lawyers. Please explain?

Where you are buying a property needing a mortgage it is normal for the purchasers' lawyers to also act for 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 solicitor 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 don't have to instruct a firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Camberley solicitors, in which case your legal fees may increase, and it may delay matters as you have another set of people involved.

We are selling our flat in Camberley. Does the solicitor have to be on the Clydesdale conveyancing panel in order to deal with paying off my mortgage?

Ordinarily, even if your lawyer is not on the Clydesdale 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 panel criteria fairly frequently currently.

We are planning on selling our property in Camberley and according to the buyers it appears that there is a risk of it being constructed land that was not decontaminated. A high street Camberley conveyancer would know this is not the case. For the life of me I don't know why the purchasers instructed a factory type conveyancing firm as opposed to a conveyancing solicitor in Camberley. We have lived in Camberley for 4 years we know that this is a non issue. Do we get in touch with our local Authority to obtain clarification need.

It sounds as though you may have a conveyancing firm already. Are they able to advise? You should check with your lawyer before you do anything. It is very possible that once the local authority has been informed of a potential issue it cannot be insured against (a bit like being diagnosed with a serious illness and then taking out life insurance to cover that same illness)

Over the last few months I have been searching for a flat up to £195,000 and identified one near me in Camberley I like with amenity areas and railway links in the vicinity, however it only has 52 years on the lease. I can't really find anything else in Camberley in this price bracket, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error purchasing a short lease?

If you need a mortgage that many years will likely be problematic. Discount the price by the amount the lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the existing owner has owned the property for at least twenty four months you can ask them to start the process of the extension and then assign it to you. You can add 90 years to the existing lease term and have £0 ground rent by law. You should speak to your conveyancing solicitor regarding this.

My a dozen years ago. He has got wed, widowed and is now married again. He will be marketing the flat this June. I believe he will simply be asked to provide a copy of his marriage certificates to the lawyer but he is worried it will frustrate the conveyancing. Should he instruct a lawyer to update the Land Registry details for the house?

The is no need to update the title for the property providing you have the proof needed to show how the name change resulted.

Any buyer’s property lawyer should check the title entries and need evidence by way of proof of the name change for instance marriage documentation.