I am in a contract race with another buyer for a property in Buntingford. What can be done to expedite the legal process?

First, If you are under time constraints to exchange it is advisable to make sure that your solicitor is familiar with the area as they will have local contacts and insight. It is possible that they may have transacted otherproperties in the same neighbourhood. Therefore consider using a Buntingford conveyancing firm. Second, be sure that the lawyer is on the on the approved list for your mortgage company. It is believed that just under twenty per cent of Buntingford conveyancing deals are held up or derailed after finding out that a buyer’s conveyancer was not on their banks member panel. This can often result in the home move being delayed by as much as three weeks. It is believed that this issue impacts approximately one hundred thousand home sales every year. Many Buntingford conveyancing firms can not act for certain banks so do check as early as possible.

My relative advised me that where I am purchasing in Buntingford I should ask my conveyancer to execute a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. Can you explain what the purpose of this search is?

A search of this type is sometimes included in the estimate for your Buntingford conveyancing searches. It is not a small document of about 40 pages, listing and detailing important information about Buntingford around the property and the people living there. It incorporates an Aerial Photograph, Planning Applications, Land Use, Mobile Phone Masts, Rights of Way, the Buntingford Housing Market, Council Tax Banding, the demographics of People living in the area, the dominant type of Housing, the Average House Prices, Crime details, Buntingford Education with maps and statistics, Local Amenities and other useful data about Buntingford.

The deeds to our house are lost. The lawyers who handled the conveyancing in Buntingford 5 years ago no longer exist. What are my next steps?

As long as you have a registered title the information relating to your proprietorship will be evidenced by the Land Registry with a Title Number. It is easy to execute a search at the Land Registry, identify your property and order current copies of the Registered Entries for a small fee. Where the title is Leasehold then the Land Registry will usually hold a file duplicate of the Registered Lease and again, a copy can be obtained for a small fee.

Is it best to go with a Buntingford conveyancing solicitor in close proximity to the house I am buying? We have a good friend who can execute the legal work but they are based a couple of hundredmiles away.

The primary upside of using a local Buntingford conveyancing firm is that you can attend the office to execute paperwork, present your ID and pester them if necessary. Having local Buntingford know how is a plus. However nothing is more important than finding someone that will pull out all the stops for you. If other friends have used your friend and in the main were happy that must trump using an unfamiliar Buntingford conveyancing lawyer solely due to them being round the corner.

I own a leasehold flat in Buntingford. Conveyancing was finalised in 2009. I have read on a number of advice forums that I mustn’t let the the remaining lease term to fall too short. Is this correct?

Buntingford leasehold properties are for a prescribed period - usually ninety nine years when they commenced. However a significant flats in Buntingford were built or converted 35 or more years ago and so these leases now have less than 80 years unexpired. This may sound like plenty of time however Banks, Building Societies and other mortgage lenders on the whole require leases to have a minimum of 75 years left to adequate security. Accordingly when you come to sell the property you will need a lease extension if you are approaching 75 years. To increase the marketability of your property you should be considering whether or not to extend your lease well in advance of selling the property. There are also strong financial reasons to doing so before the lease reaches even 80 years as when the lease falls below 80 years the premium to be paid to extend starts to get a lot more expensive.