I am selling my ground floor flat in West Ham and the estate agent has just text me to say that the buyers are changing their law firm. I am told that this is due to the fact that the mortgage company will only deal with solicitors on their conveyancing panel. Why would a major lender only work with certain solicitors rather the firm that they want to choose for their conveyancing in West Ham ?

Lenders have always had panels of law firms that can represent them, but in the last few years big names such as Santander, have reviewed and reduced their conveyancing panel– in some cases removing conveyancing firms who have worked with them for many years.

Lenders point to the increase in fraud by way of justification for the reduction – criteria have been narrowed as a smaller panel is easier to monitor. No lender will say how many solicitors have been dropped, claiming the information is commercially sensitive, but the Law Society claims that it is being contacted daily by practices that have been removed from panels. Plenty of firms are unaware that they have been dropped until contacted by a borrower who has instructed them as might be the situation in your buyers' case. Your buyers are not going to have any impact on this.

The West Ham conveyancing lawyers that just started acting on my purchase in West Ham have without warning closed. They were on acting for me because I needed a lawyer on the Aldermore conveyancing panel and my preferred West Ham lawyer was not. I gave my credit card details for them to take one hundred and fifty pounds for searches. What are my options?

Assuming that you have an Estate Agent in the equation then let them know immediately so that they advise the vendors that there may be a slight delay due to reasons beyond your control. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and urge their lawyer to send a new set of papers to your new solicitors. You will need to appoint new lawyers that are on the Aldermore 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 may be able to assist.

A friend suggested that where I am purchasing in West Ham I should ask my conveyancer to carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?

This is a search is usually included in the estimate for your West Ham conveyancing searches. It is a large report of about 40 pages, listing and detailing significant information about West Ham around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the West Ham Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average House Prices, Crime statistics, West Ham Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data regarding West Ham.

I am looking for a leasehold apartment up to £195,000 and identified one round the corner in West Ham I like with a park and transport links in the vicinity, the downside is that it only has 52 remaining years left on the lease. I can't really find anything else in West Ham in this price bracket, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error acquiring a short lease?

If you need a home loan the shortness of the lease will likely be an issue. Discount the offer by the expected lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the current owner has owned the premises for at least twenty four months you may request that they commence the lease extension formalities and then assign it to you. An additional ninety years can be extended on to the existing lease term with a zero ground rent applied. You should speak to your conveyancing solicitor about this.

I need to find a lender panel solicitor in West Ham. Could you help me?

Unfortunately it’s not apparent why you need a West Ham panel solicitor but in any event, if you can not find one on our search tool you will need to speak directly to the mortgage company to find out which solicitors in West Ham are on their panel . If you do find such a firm in West Ham not listed please direct them to our site to list. After all the cost is only one £1 a month