My wife and I intend to remortgage our apartment in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth with Bank of Ireland. We have a son 19 who lives with us. Our solicitor requested us to identify anyone over the age of 17 other than ourselves who reside at the property. The solicitor has now sent a form for our son to sign, giving up any rights in the event that the apartment is repossessed. I have a couple of concerns (1) Is this form unique to the Bank of Ireland conveyancing panel as he did not need to sign this form when we purchased 5 years ago (2) Does our son by signing this giving up his entitlement to inherit the property?

On the face of it your lawyer has done nothing wrong as it is established procedure for any occupier who is aged 17 or over to sign the necessary Consent Form, which is purely to state that any rights he has in the property are postponed and secondary to Bank of Ireland. This is solely used to protect Bank of Ireland if the property were re-possessed so that in such circumstances, your son would be legally obliged to leave. It does not impact your son’s right to inherit the apartment. Please note that if your son were to inherit and the mortgage in favour of Bank of Ireland had not been discharged, he would be liable to take over the loan or pay it off, but other than that, there is nothing stopping him from keeping the property in accordance with your will or the rules of intestacy.

We are planning to purchase with Darlington Building Society. I visited a few high street practices but cant to find a Chorleywood and Rickmansworth conveyancing firm on the Darlington Building Society panel. Could you help?

Please do make use of the search tool on this site. Pick the building society and type Chorleywood and Rickmansworth or your preferred area and you will see numerous solicitors located in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth or nearest you.

I am purchasing my first flat in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth with the aid of help to buy. The sellers would not move on the amount so I negotiated 6k of additionals instead. The property agent suggested that I not disclose to my lawyer about this deal as it will adversely affect my loan with the lender. Is this normal?.

All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the builder of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.

Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.

Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.

I opted to have a survey carried out on a house in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth before appointing solicitors. I have been advised that there is a flying freehold aspect to the house. Our surveyor advised that some lenders may refuse to issue a mortgage on such a property.

It depends who your proposed lender is. Bank of Scotland has different instructions from Halifax. Should you wish to call us we can check with the relevant lender. If you lender is happy to lend one our lawyers can help as they are used to dealing with flying freeholds in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth. Conveyancing may be slightly more expensive based on your lender's requirements.

I was recommended by a number of estate agents in Chorleywood and Rickmansworth to select a conveyancer using your seach tool. What’s the financial incentive for Estate Agents to recommend your services rather than a competitor’s?

We refuse to offer any commission for directing people our way. We thought it would be too underhand a fee because members of the public would think, ‘How come the agent getting a kickback? Why am I not getting any benefit too?’ So we decided to step away from that.