My fiance and I are looking to buy a flat in Poole and are in fact using a Poole conveyancing firm. Within the last couple of days our lawyer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with the expectation that exchange is imminent. Norwich and Peterborough Building Society have this morning contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Poole conveyancer is not on their approved list of lawyers. Please explain?

Where you are buying a property needing a mortgage it is standard 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 property lawyer 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 bank's conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Poole solicitors, in which case it will likely add costs, and it may delay matters as you are adding another lawyer into the mix.

I am buying a property without a mortgage in Poole. I have been residing for the previous dozen years in Poole. Conveyancing searches are a lot of money. Given that I know the area and road intimately should I not bother getting the solicitor to do all the conveyancing searches?

In the absence of a home loan, then all but one or two of the Poole conveyancing searches are at your discretion. Your solicitor will try and sway you, perhaps strongly, that you should have searches carried out, but she is duty bound to take that path of encouragement . Do consider; if you are likely to sell the house at a future date, it will likely be be of interest to your prospective purchaser what the searches reveal. There are plenty of instances where properties with no practical issues can still reveal adverse search results. A competent conveyancing solicitor in Poole will be able to give you some sensible guidance here.

Will commercial conveyancing searches disclose proposed roadworks that may affect a commercial site in Poole?

Its becoming the norm that commercial conveyancing solicitors in Poole will carry out a SiteSolutions Highways report as it dramatically cuts the time that conveyancers expend in investigating accurate data on highways that impact buildings and development assets in Poole. The search result sets out definitive data on the adoption status of roads, footpaths and verges, as well as the implication of traffic schemes and the rights of way surrounding a commercial development sites in Poole.

For each commercial conveyancing transaction in Poole it is crucial to investigate the adoption status of roads surrounding a site. The absence of identifying developments where adoption procedures have not been dealt with adequately can cause delays to Poole commercial conveyancing deals as well as pose a risk to future plans for the site. These searches are not carried out for domestic conveyancing in Poole.

I am in need of some leasehold conveyancing in Poole. Before diving in I want to be sure as to the number of years remaining on the lease.

Assuming the lease is registered - and most are in Poole - then the leasehold title will always include the short particulars 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.

Poole Leasehold Conveyancing - Sample of Questions you should ask Prior to Purchasing

What is the annual maintenance fee and ground rent? The best form of lease arrangement is where the freehold title is owned by the leaseholders. In this scenario the leaseholders enjoy control and even though a managing agent is frequently retained where the building is bigger than a house conversion, the managing agent acts for the leaseholders themselves. Please note if it is fewer than eighty years it will have adverse implications on the value of the flat. Check with your bank that they are content with remaining years on the lease. Leases with fewer than 80 years remaining means that you will probably need a lease extension at some point and it is worth finding out what this would cost. For most Poolelease extensions you will be required to have been the owner of the residence for a couple of years in order to be entitled to extend the lease.

Myself and my wife have recently had an offer agreed on a apartment and had meeting on Friday with the Post Office for the mortgage. They warned us that when it comes to choosing a conveyancer that unless they are on their approved panel of conveyancing practitioners then we will have to pay out an additional charge of £200. This is is due to the fact that they will then have to instruct a property lawyer to act on their behalf as well as the one we choose to act on our behalf and we assume responsibility for their costs. I have asked the Post Office to send me with a list so I can obtain estimates only from their approved conveyancers but was told that I need to check with each individual conveyancer to see if they are on the panel. Is there a list online?

You can enquire of the Post Office what their criteria for joining their panel is for a solicitor.Thereafter ask the conveyancing practitioner of your choice whether they fit that criteria and have they acted on mortgages for the Post Office in the past. Where the answer to those is yes, then just clarify this with the Post Office. Another option is to use our search tool and we should be able to identify a solicitor in Poole on the approved list for the Post Office.