My partner and I are planning to purchase a house in Islington and have appointed a Islington conveyancing practice. Within the last couple of days our solicitor has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report with a view to exchanging next week. have this morning contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Islington lawyer is not on their approved list of lawyers. What do we do from here?
If you are buying a property with the assistance of a mortgage it is conventional for the purchasers' lawyers 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 solicitor 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 lender’s conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Islington lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you are adding another lawyer into the mix.
It is is a decade since I bought my home in Islington. Conveyancing lawyers have recently been instructed on the sale but I am unable to locate my title deeds. Will this jeopardise the sale?
Don’t worry too much. First there is a possibility that the deeds will be retained by the lender or they could stored with the conveyancers who handled the purchase. Secondly in most cases the title will be registered at the land registry and you will be able to prove you own the property by your conveyancing solicitors obtaining up to date copy of the land registers. Nearly all conveyancing in Islington involves registered property but in the unlikely event that your home is unregistered it adds to the complexity but is resolvable.
My friend advised me that if I am purchasing in Islington I should ask my conveyancer to perform a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. What does it cover?
This is a search is sometimes included in the estimate for your Islington conveyancing searches. It is not a small document of more than thirty pages, listing and setting out significant information about Islington around the property and the people living there. It includes an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Islington Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the type of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average Property Price, Crime statistics, Islington Education with plans and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data regarding Islington.
Are there restrictive covenants that are commonly picked up as part of conveyancing in Islington?
Restrictive covenants can be picked up when reviewing land registry title as part of the process of conveyancing in Islington. An 1874 stipulation that was seen was ‘The houses to be erected on the estate are each to be of a uniform elevation in accordance with the drawings to be prepared or approved by the vendor’s surveyor…’
How does conveyancing in Islington differ for new build properties?
Most buyers of new build premises in Islington come to us having been asked by the housebuilder to sign contracts and commit to the purchase even before the property is built. This is because new home sellers in Islington typically buy the site, plan the estate and want to get the plots sold off as they are building the properties. Buyers, therefore, will have to exchange contracts without actually seeing the house they are buying. To reduce the chances of losing the property, buyers should instruct conveyancing solicitors as soon as the property is reserved and mortgage applications should be submitted quickly. Due to the fact that it could be several months and even years between exchange of contracts and completion, the mortgage offer may need to be extended. It would be wise to use a lawyer who specialises in new build conveyancing especially if they are accustomed to new build conveyancing in Islington or who has acted in the same development.