Completed the sale of my flat in Merseyside last February yet the purchaser is telephoning every few hours to say his conveyancer needs to hear from mylawyer. What are the post completion sale legalities following completion?

Post completion of your house sale your lawyer should forward the transfer deeds and all additional paperwork to the purchaser's conveyancer. If applicable, your solicitor must also send confirmation that the legal charge in favour of the lender has been repaid to the purchasers lawyers. There is unlikely to be post completion steps unique to conveyancing in Merseyside.

What will a local search inform me regarding the house my wife and I buying in Merseyside?

Merseyside conveyancing often starts with the ordering local authority searches directly from your local Authority or through a personal search company such as Onsearch The local search is essential in every Merseyside conveyancing purchase; that is if you don’t want any nasty once you have moved into your property. The search should supply data on, amongst other things, details on planning applications relevant to the property (whether granted or refused), building control history, any enforcement action, restrictions on permitted development, nearby road schemes, contaminated land and radon gas; in all a total of 13 subject headings.

The deeds to my property are lost. The solicitors who dealt with the conveyancing in Merseyside 5 years ago no longer exist. What are my next steps?

You no longer need to have the physical deeds to evidence that you are the registered proprietor of land or premises, given that the Land Registry have everything they need in a digital format.

I have just appointed agents to market my basement apartment in Merseyside. Conveyancing has not commenced, but I have recently had a quarterly maintenance charge demand – what should I do?

It best that you clear the service charge as you normally would as all rents and maintenance payments should be allotted on completion, so you will be reimbursed by the purchaser for the period running from after the completion date to the subsequent invoice date. Most management companies will not acknowledge the buyer unless the service charges have been paid and are up to date, so it is important for both buyer and seller for the seller to show that they are up to date. Having a clear account will assist your cause and will leave you no worse off financially.

I own a 1st floor flat in Merseyside, conveyancing formalities finalised in 1995. Can you let me have an estimate of the premium that my landlord can legally expect in return for granting a renewal of my lease? Equivalent properties in Merseyside with over 90 years remaining are worth £165,000. The average or mid-range amount of ground rent is £45 per annum. The lease finishes on 21st October 50

With just 50 years unexpired we estimate the premium for your lease extension to span between £36,100 and £41,800 plus plus your own and the landlord's "reasonable" professional fees.

The suggested premium range above a general guide to costs for renewing a lease, but we cannot give you the actual costs without more detailed investigations. Do not use the figures in a Notice of Claim or as an informal offer. There are no doubt additional issues that need to be considered and you obviously want to be as accurate as possible in your negotiations. You should not move forward placing reliance on this information without first getting professional advice.

I own a leasehold flat in Merseyside. Conveyancing was finished in 2011. I have read on a number of consumer forums that I mustn’t allow the lease length get too short. Why is that a problem?

Merseyside residential long term leases are for a fixed period - often ninety nine years when they started. However a significant flats in Merseyside were constructed or converted 20 or more years ago and so these leases now have fewer than 80 years left to run. This may seem like plenty of time however Banks, Building Societies and other mortgage lenders generally require leases to have at least 75 years remaining to be mortgageable. Accordingly when you come to sell the property you will need to extend the term of your lease if you are nearing eighty years. To optimize your property value you should be considering whether to extend your lease long before you come to sell it. There are also strong financial reasons to doing so before the lease reaches even 80 years as when the lease is less than 80 years the amount to be paid to extend starts to increase.