Our experienced property team deals with all aspects of buying and selling residential property.
If you want to know how we can help you, please go here for a conveyancing quote
NC Law Solicitors has secured membership to the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme – the mark of excellence for the home buying process. NC Law 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.
For more information on the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme visit www.lawsociety.org.uk/cqs
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.
Contact Us:
- 384 Garratt Lane, London SW18 4HP
- ncl@nclaw.co.uk
- 020 8879 9400