Residential Property Conveyancing

Case Study Caption
Our experienced property team deals with all aspects of buying and selling residential property.

Introduction

Morris Solicitors has secured membership to the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme – the mark of excellence for the home buying process. Morris Solicitors underwent rigorous assessment by the Law Society in order to secure CQS status, which marks the firm out as meeting high standards in the residential conveyancing process.

CQS improves efficiency with common, consistent standards and service levels and enables consumers to recognise practices that provide a quality residential conveyancing service.

Buying a home is one of the largest purchases anyone will make in their lifetime, so it is essential that it is done to the highest standard by a solicitor. There are many different conveyancing service providers out there, making it difficult for home buyers to identify those which can ensure a safe and efficient level of service.

The scheme requires practices to undergo a strict assessment, compulsory training, self reporting, random audits and annual reviews in order to maintain CQS status. It is open only to members of the Law Society who meet the demanding standards set by the scheme and has the support of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the Building Societies Association, Legal Ombudsman and the Association of British Insurers.

We advise clients on a wide range of residential property matters including:

Buying and selling both freehold and leasehold property
Lease extensions, either by agreement with freeholder or by statutory notice
Re-mortgages
Transfers of equity
Auction sales and purchases
Buying new build properties from developers
Dealing with mortgages, both institutional and private
Arranging deeds of variations for defective leases
Restrictive covenants and easements
Restrictive covenant, chancel repair and other property related indemnity insurances
Probate and Court of Protection sales
Declarations of trust in co-ownership purchases

Common Conveyancing Issues

Residential conveyancing is generally quite procedural and go smoothly, but there a few things that relatively regularly pop up that we need to deal with:

  • Auction purchases. These often have quite deadlines, sometimes as short as 28 days, and the buyer has already committed to buying. This means that a lot of the usual conveyancing work is bypassed, such as the need for obtaining searches
  • Leasehold issues – there are lots of things that can go wrong with leasehold properties, such as the Lease not having adequate rights, which is quite common in old leases, high service charges, short term etc. We have dealt with all of these.
  • Lack of certificates and warranties – usually, indemnity insurance will be enough to cover this.
  • Suspicious AML – we are required by law to check both source of funds and source of wealth, and that can sometimes feel intrusive for clients. Sometimes the process is easy, like when funds come from a property sale or divorce settlement, but sometimes the money comes from multiple sources into different bank accounts across the globe and we need to spend a lot of time looking through bank statements.

Interesting Cases

In one case, we acted for a Probate sale in London. Some of the beneficiaries had renovated the property, but when it came time to sell, it was established that the work had not been done in accordance with planning or building regulations. This lead to a several month process of redoing the works and then reapplying for planning and building regulations. We eventually managed to sell the property after several aborted attempts.

In one recent case, the owners of a maisonette owned the freehold as a limited company. However, they had not done any company accounts and the company had been dissolved. If that dissolution had happened within 6 years, the clients could apply to have it reinstated, but as it has been longer, the company could not be salvaged, and all possessions owned by the company, including the property, then reverted to the crown. We dealt with the purchase back from the crown.

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Last updated: 01-07-2023

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