I have today made my last payment due on my mortgage with Aldermore. I assume I don't need a Caversham Heights lawyer on the Aldermore panel to discharge the mortgage at the Land Registry. Am I right?

If you have finished paying off your Aldermore 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 Aldermore mortgage from the register. Aldermore, 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:

1. but are not moving to another property
2. where Aldermore has sent the Land Registry the discharge electronically, and
3. Aldermore has instructed the Land Registry to do so

After much negotiation I have agreed a price on a house in Caversham Heights. My mortgage broker suggested a property lawyer. I paid an upfront payment of £225. Not long after, the conveyancer 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 offer was accepted on a house in Caversham Heights on 29/11/2024, valuation was booked 2 days after, received a clean bill of health. Conveyancer instructed, so all that was missing was my mortgage offer. Having made daily calls to Kent Reliance and chasing them on my offer, I have now been told that my offer will not be issued unless the lawyer is on the Kent Reliance conveyancing panel. Can the lender hold off the offer?

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 Kent Reliance to deal with your lawyer's application to be on the Kent Reliance conveyancing panel. There's no guarantee that your solicitor will be accepted.

A relative recommended that where I am buying in Caversham Heights 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 quoted for as part of the standard Caversham Heights conveyancing searches. It is a large report of more than thirty pages, listing and setting out significant information about Caversham Heights around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Caversham Heights Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime details, Caversham Heights Education with plans and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about Caversham Heights.

I opted to have a survey completed on a house in Caversham Heights before appointing solicitors. I have been informed that there is a flying freehold element to the house. Our surveyor has said that some mortgage companies tend not issue a mortgage on a flying freehold house.

It depends who your proposed lender is. HSBC has different instructions from Halifax. If you contact us we can investigate further with the appropriate mortgage company. If you lender is happy to lend one our lawyers can help as they are accustomed to dealing with flying freeholds in Caversham Heights. Conveyancing may be slightly more expensive based on your lender's requirements.

Planning to exchange soon on a garden flat in Caversham Heights. Conveyancing lawyers have said that they are sending me a report on Monday. What should I be looking out for?

The report on title for your leasehold conveyancing in Caversham Heights should include some of the following:

Responsibility for repairing the window frames Who has the liability to repair and maintain the building. It is essential that you know who is responsible the repair and maintenance of every part of the building Details of the parties to the lease, for instance these could be the lessee, head lessor, freeholder Whether the lease restricts you from letting out the property, or working from home

I invested in buying a 1st floor flat in Caversham Heights, conveyancing was carried out April 2007. Can you let me have an estimated range of the fair premium for a lease extension? Equivalent flats in Caversham Heights with an extended lease are worth £180,000. The ground rent is £65 charged once a year. The lease comes to an end on 21st October 2084

With only 59 years remaining on your lease we estimate the premium for your lease extension to span between £20,900 and £24,200 as well as legals.

The suggested premium range above a general guide to costs for renewing a lease, but we are not able to provide a more accurate figure in the absence of comprehensive due diligence. You should not use the figures in tribunal or court proceedings. There are no doubt additional issues 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 based on this information without first getting professional advice.

My husband and I are buying a 2 bedroom flat in Caversham Heights. When we first instructed conveyancer, we were told they were on all major UK lender panels. The mortgage broker emailed yesterday to say that they don't appear to be on the Nottingham approved list. Were it to be true, what should we do? Should we just find a different lawyer that is on their approved list or do we pay for separate representation, with Nottingham selecting their own preferred property lawyer.

When buying a property with mortgage finance it is usual for the purchaser’s lawyers to also act for the purchaser's lender. In order to act for a bank or building society a property lawyer has to be on that lender's list of approved lawyers. An application has to be made by the lawyer to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the solicitor has to satisfy. Some lenders now require their panel firms to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme. Your conveyancing practitioner should call Nottingham to discover 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 Nottingham's conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Caversham Heights solicitors, in which case your legal fees may increase, and it may delay matters as you are adding another conveyancer into the equation.