My wife and I are looking to purchase a flat in St Werburghs and are in fact using a St Werburghs conveyancing practice. Within the past 48 hours our lawyer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with a view to exchanging next week. Yorkshire Building Society have this evening contacted us to advise us that they have now hit a problem as our St Werburghs conveyancer is not on their conveyancing panel. Please explain?

When purchasing a property with the benefit of a mortgage it is standard for the purchasers' solicitors to also represent 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 Accreditation Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your lender and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own lawyers to represent them. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the bank's conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred St Werburghs lawyers, in which case your legal fees may increase, and it may delay matters as you have another set of people involved.

The St Werburghs conveyancing solicitors that just started acting on my purchase in St Werburghs have without warning closed. I only went with them because I needed a lawyer on the Lloyds conveyancing panel and my preferred St Werburghs lawyer was not. I wrote them a cheque for two hundred pounds in advance. What do I do now?

If you have an estate agent involved then let them know immediately so that they advise the vendors that there may be a slight delay due to the problems encountered. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and urge their lawyer to send a new set of papers to your new solicitors. You should appoint new lawyers that are on the Lloyds conveyancing panel and notify the lender. If you have paid over any money, it will hopefully be held by the SRA as money in an intervened firm's bank accounts is transferred to the SRA. Then, the SRA or the intervention agent looks at the intervened firm's accounts to work out who the money belongs to. To claim your money you will need to contact the SRA. If the SRA cannot return money you are owed from the firm's bank accounts, or if they can only return part of the money, you can apply to the Compensation Fund for a grant. Your new lawyers should be in a position to assist.

I decided to have a survey completed on a property in St Werburghs before instructing conveyancers. I have been advised that there is a flying freehold aspect to the property. Our surveyor advised that some banks tend refuse to give a loan on a flying freehold house.

It varies from the lender to lender. Bank of Scotland has different requirements for example to Halifax. Should you wish to telephone us we can look into this 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 St Werburghs. Conveyancing will be smoother if you use a solicitor in St Werburghs especially if they regularly deal with such properties in St Werburghs.

I am a negotiator for a busy estate agent office in St Werburghs where we have witnessed a few leasehold sales derailed as a result of leases having less than 80 years remaining. I have received inconsistent advice from local St Werburghs conveyancing solicitors. Please can you confirm whether the seller of a flat can start the lease extension process for the buyer?

Provided that the seller has been the owner for at least 2 years it is possible, to serve a Section 42 notice to start the lease extension process and assign the benefit of the notice to the purchaser. This means that the buyer can avoid having to sit tight for 2 years for a lease extension. Both sets of lawyers will agree to form of assignment. The assignment needs to be completed prior to, or simultaneously with completion of the sale.

An alternative approach is to extend the lease informally by agreement with the landlord either before or after the sale. If you are informally negotiating there are no rules and so you cannot insist on the landlord agreeing to grant an extension or transferring the benefit of an agreement to the buyer.

Leasehold Conveyancing in St Werburghs - A selection of Questions you should consider before Purchasing

How many of the leaseholders are in arrears for their service charge payments? What prohibitions exist in the St Werburghs Lease?

I have been told by many family members that it should take 6-8 weeks for St Werburghs conveyancing to complete.This was 3 ago. The property information was only forwarded to my lawyer last week so now does it countdown?

No definitive time frame exists for conveyancing in St Werburghs. Conveyancing is subject to many variable. St Werburghs conveyancing searches in and of themselves may take some weeks to arrive.