We are acquiring a newly built duplex in Waterhouses and my lawyer is informing me that she has to the mortgage company to reveal incentives from the builder. I am nearing the developer’s deadline to exchange and I have no desire to prolong deal. is my lawyer playing by the book?

You should not exchange unless you have been advised to do so by your solicitor. A precondition to being on a lender panel is to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook conditions. The CML Conveyancing Handbook requires that your lawyer have the appropriate Disclosure of Incentive form completed by the developer and accepted by your lender.

My colleague advised me that where I am purchasing in Waterhouses I should carry out a Neighbourhood, Planning and Local Amenity Search. What does it cover?

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

I have a terraced Georgian house in Waterhouses. Conveyancing lawyer represented me and Birmingham Midshires. I happened to do a free search for it on the Land Registry database and I saw a couple of entries: one for freehold, another for leasehold with the matching address. If a house is not a freehold shouldn't I have been informed?

You should assess the Freehold register you have again and check the Charges Register as there may be mention of a lease. The best way to be sure that you are also the registered owner of the leasehold and freehold title as well is to check (£3). It is not completely unheard of in Waterhouses and other locations in the country and poses no real issues for owners other than when they buy they have to account for both freehold and leasehold interests when dealing with mortgage companies. You can also enquire as to the situation with the conveyancing practitioner who conducted the purchase.

I have been on the look out for a leasehold apartment up to £245,000 and identified one near me in Waterhouses I like with amenity areas and transport links in the vicinity, the downside is that it only has 49 remaining years left on the lease. There is not much else in Waterhouses suitable, so just wondered if I would be making a grave error purchasing a short lease?

If you need a mortgage that many years will be problematic. Reduce the offer by the expected lease extension will cost if not already taken into account. If the current proprietor has owned the premises for at least 2 years you can request that they commence the lease extension formalities and pass it to you. You can add 90 years to the current lease term and have £0 ground rent by law. You should speak to your conveyancing lawyer about this matter.

Frank (my husband) and I may need to rent out our Waterhouses 1st floor flat for a while due to taking a sabbatical. We used a Waterhouses conveyancing firm in 2002 but they have closed and we did not think at the time get any guidance as to whether the lease permits subletting. How do we find out?

The lease governs the relationship between the landlord and you the leaseholder; in particular, it will say if subletting is not allowed, or permitted but only subject to certain caveats. The accepted inference is that if the lease contains no specific ban or restriction, subletting is allowed. Most leases in Waterhouses do not prevent strict prohibition on subletting – such a provision would undoubtedly devalue the property. In most cases there is a basic requirement that the owner notifies the freeholder, possibly supplying a duplicate of the sublease.

Waterhouses Leasehold Conveyancing - A selection of Queries Prior to buying

If a Waterhouses lease has less than eighty years it will affect the value of the flat. Check with your lender that they are happy with residual term of the lease. Leases with fewer than 80 years remaining means that you will probably have to extend the lease at some point and it is worth finding out how much this would cost. For most Waterhouseslease extensions you will need to own the property for two years before you are legally able to extend the lease. What is the length of the lease? On the whole the cost for major works tend not to be built into the service charges, albeit that some managing agents in Waterhouses require leaseholders to contribute towards a sinking fund and this is used to offset against larger repairs or maintenance.