My fiance and I are hoping to acquire a house in Colerne and have instructed a Colerne conveyancing firm. Within the past 48 hours our property lawyer has sent a preliminary report and documents to look through in anticipation of exchanging contracts shortly. HSBC Bank have this afternoon contacted us to advise us that there is now an issue as our Colerne lawyer is not on their conveyancing panel. Please explain?

Where you are buying a property with the assistance of a mortgage it is normal for the purchasers' lawyers to also represent the mortgage company. 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 Quality Scheme. Your property lawyer should contact your mortgage company and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own solicitors to act. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the lender’s conveyancing panel and you may continue to use your own Colerne solicitors, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you have another set of people involved.

I am purchasing a property without a mortgage in Colerne. I have lived for the last Seventeen years in Colerne. Conveyancing searches are exorbitant. Given that I know the road and vicinity very well should I not bother getting the solicitor to do all the conveyancing searches?

In the absence of a mortgage, then all but one or two of the Colerne conveyancing searches are at your discretion. Your lawyer will ’encourage you, no-doubt strongly, that you should have searches carried out, but she has a professional duty to do this. One thing to consider; if you are intend to sell the house one day, it could be of importance to your future purchaser what the searches disclose. On occasion properties with day to day issues can still reveal negative search results. A competent conveyancing solicitor in Colerne will provide you some practical guidance here.

Please explain the implications if my lawyer’s firm is suspended from the Leeds Building Society Conveyancing panel ahead of completing my conveyancing in Colerne?

First, this is very unlikely to happen. In most cases even where a law firm is removed off of a panel the lender would allow the completion to go ahead as the lender would appreciate the difficulties that they would place you in if you have to instruct a new solicitor days before completion. In a worst case scenario where the lender insists that you instruct a new firm then it is possible for a very good lawyer to expedite the conveyancing albeit that you may pay a significant premium for this. The analogous situation is where a buyer instructs a lawyer, exchanges contracts and the law firm is shut down by a regulator such as the SRA. Again, in this situation you can find lawyers who can troubleshoot their way to bring the conveyancing to a satisfactory conclusion - albeit for a fee.

The deeds to my house are lost. The conveyancers who dealt with the conveyancing in Colerne 5 years ago are no longer around. What are my options?

These day there are duplicates made of almost everything, and your solicitor should be aware exactly where to locate all the appropriate paperwork so you may buy or dispose of your house without any difficulty. If copies can’t be located, your solicitor can arrange cover in the form of insurance or indemnities protecting you against future claims on your premises.

I am buying a new build house in Colerne with a loan from TSB. The builders refused to budge the amount so I negotiated 6k of fixtures and fittings instead. The sale representative suggested that I not disclose to my solicitor about the deal as it will adversely affect my mortgage 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.