About CQS Conveyancing

New data revealed by the CML shows a marked increase in London conveyancing for first time buyers. For the third quarter of 2013 there were 13,100 conveyancing transactions involving first-time buyers in London. This represented an increase of 24% on the previous quarter and a rise of 32% compared to the third quarter of 2012.   Property price increases in London, and the knock on effect on the typical loan amount has resulted in stronger growth in the value of lending to first-time buyers.  In total, £2,960 million was advanced in the third quarter of 2013, a 25% increase compared to quarter two and up 42% compared to the same period in 2012.

Key points from the latest statistical evidencing an increase in right-to-buy conveyancing are: in 2013 to 2014 quarter 1, local authorities sold an estimated 2,149 dwellings under the Right to Buy scheme; this is nearly 5 times the 443 sold in the same quarter of the previous year   there were approximately 300 fewer sales in 2013 to 2014 quarter 1 than in 2012 to 2013 quarter 4; this was the first quarter on quarter reduction in sales after 3 quarters of increases   local authorities in London accounted for 18% of sales in 2013 to 2014 quarter 1, this compares to a maximum of 21% in the previous 7 years   in 2013 to 2014 quarter 1, local authorities received approximately £129 million from Right to Buy sales, more than 5 times higher than the £24 million in the same quarter of 2012 to 2013   the average receipt per dwelling in 2013 to 2014 quarter 1 was £60,000, this compares to £54,000 in the same quarter of the previous year   there were 65 dwellin...

Did you spot the following question on your Professional Indemnity Insurance renewal form for 2014? In the last 10 years have you carried out any “right to buy” conveyancing transactions? If yes provide full details on page 10 including total number of transactions each year, number from referrals (e.g. brokers or marketing professionals and number of direct approaches). Did you ask the question as to why it was there?  Many firms will soon find out the reason why as solicitors face thousands of claims for professional negligence over their involvement in ‘right to buy’ work. The Master of the Rolls has recently published a new Practice Direction supplementing the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 concerning Right to Buy claims. The new Direction provides for the transfer of existing and new claims to the Chancery Division and the appointment of a designed judge, Mr Justice Sales, for the purpose of further case management and trial or trial of issues arising from such claims. Rea...

A heated debate has recently taken place at Westminster Hall where it was argued that the current leasehold system favors property management companies.   Jim Fitzpatrick MP has opened fire on “rip-offs” faced by leaseholders in a call for reform of unfair charges and a confusing legal system.   Mr Fitzpatrick said: “Urgent action is needed to level the playing field between leaseholders and property management companies.   He added: “The government needs to rein in predatory property management companies with legislation that gives leaseholders a fair say and the ability to challenge any and all charges.”   New government legislation will make it easier for leaseholders to seek redress against the property management companies, which will have to sign up to a watchdog early next year. Agents will be forced to tell leaseholders what their fees and charges are before the lease is signed.

Whist Sole Practitioners are currently welcome apply to be on the Accord Mortgages conveyancing panel there are a number of conditions (as of today’s date) that you should be specifically aware of as a sole practitioner: All solicitor applicants located in England and Wales - regardless of whether they are sole practitioners-  who apply to join the Accord Conveyancing panel will require Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) accreditation. If on a sale or remortgage you require title deeds or other documents from Accord in connection with a personal mortgage you can not request the deeds. Rather you must nominate a different firm on the Accord panel to request the deeds or documents and to handle the conveyancing. Your office(s) will be open during normal office hours in your locality. Accord Mortgages must be able to contact you between the hours of 9am to 5pm through Monday to Friday,  You must arrange for appropriate cover where necessary. Your locum must be a member of th...

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has recently announced its intention to conduct a market study into residential property management services for leasehold homes in England and Wales. In time the findings may have implications for leasehold conveyancing. The OFT is particularly interested in Whether leasehold owners feel that they have sufficient involvement in decisions taken about appointing managing agents, and if it is difficult to establish whether the property manager is providing value for money or a sufficient standard of service. Whether property managers and freeholders have the same interests as leaseholders in, for example, keeping down costs of maintenance work or buildings insurance. Whether there is effective competition, including evidence about how easy it is to switch between providers. Whether residents receive good value for money and reasonable quality of service. The time, effort and resources required to complain and seek redress. Views can ...

There are up to 1.43 million homes in the UK  are at risk from shortening leasehold terms – threatening borrowers and lenders with negative equity. This represents a significant amount of potential conveyancing work.   As the leasehold tenure falls below eighty years, the value of the property begins to fall and value of the property plummets rapidly once the lease runs down to below 60 years.   Apartments are particularly at risk given that most UK flats are leasehold rather than freehold. Of the 1.43 million leasehold properties in the UK, 817,000 are flats, while the remaining 612,000 are houses. This means inner city urban areas are disproportionately affected by the problem of shortening lease terms.   Searches on Google have increased dramatically over the last five years surrounding key words around lease terms.The team at Lexsure have experience in building lease extension calculators for law firms.   Interest-only mortgage borrowers are...

The CML has recently expressed concerns with the SRA’s proposals for shortening the retention period as they relate to property deeds and associated conveyancing files.   In an effort to reduce expenses the SRA have proposed to put in place a retention period of purchase files for 7 years from date of file closure; or a period of 2 years from the date of intervention for registered deeds or documents.   The CML are urging that the Solicitors Regulation Authority retain the current retention period of 7 years from the date of intervention.   The CML have expressed concerns that reducing the time period for holding conveyancing files from the current requirements, would cause potential difficulty for claimants, including lender claimants, if they are unable to access historic conveyancing files required to pursue claims that are outside of typical limitation periods. This can occur where the claimant is relying on latent damage, Nykredit–type claims and claims ...

It looks as though CQS is facing a credibility challenge as the single conveyancing panel management facility supported by the CML. It appears that the CML as well as lenders such as RBS and Santander are supporting a new lender panel portal to be launched in 2014. The Lender Exchange formerly known as http://www.convey-panel.co.uk is a privately run entity through First Decision Limited. The new panel management facility has two stated objectives – to minimise the costs and administrative burden on conveyancing solicitors responding to regular duplicate information requests from multiple lenders and to help lenders minimise fraud and negligence through robust due diligence (although it is not yet clear how this second element is to be achieved).   The panel software will give conveyancing firms throughout the UK (not just England and wales) an easy way to submit and update information to lenders about their conveyancing practice through a, secure interface, saving them t...

LENDERmonitor has advised conveyancers via their update service about uncertainty relating to BSA mortgage instruction changes.  The BSA introduced mortgage instructions (their version of the CML Handbook) for its members in January 2010. The BSA Mortgage Instructions are currently being used by 31 lenders. As is the case with the CML Handbook, the BSA Mortgage Instructions comprise of two sections: a core set of mortgage instructions; and specific requirements setting out individual lenders’ requirements.   The following warning was issued by LENDERmonitor: Please note that the BSA have recently made some wholesale changes to their website including the formatting of their Mortgage Instructions. We have identified a number of potential errors including important questions having been removed. We strongly recommend that before completing on any transaction with a BSA lender that you contact the lender directly to send you their updated mortgage instructions.

If there's no really good reason for a conveyancing to be done locally, it will migrate to the web. Conveyancing firms that migrate to often need economies of scale, but eventually those businesses quickly coalesce into just a limited number of winners.   The winning strategy for the local conveyancing firm, then, is: a. provide a conveyancing service that truly works better when it's local (e.g speedier or more personalized), and   b. do it in a way that the conveyancing process works better when it's small, custom, connected and not in search of economies of scale.

The proposed new air traffic routes have significant  implications for practitioners working in residential conveyancing and commercial property. The London Airspace Consultation (LAC) will run from 15 October 2013 to 21 January 2014 for stakeholders and the public to view and leave feedback that will help with the modernisation of the UK’s airspace structure. This consultation is the first stage in a wider programme of proposed changes to deliver the UK’s Future Airspace Strategy (FAS), developed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with the support of the aviation industry. It will deliver significant benefits, including fuel savings for airlines, which will also mean fewer CO2 emissions, and less noise overall for people living below. Practitioners need to be aware of the proposals and consider whether it is necessary to make enquiries to establish whether the property or land in question may be affected. While there is a possibility that the scheme will not go ahead, th...

Recent changes in Permitted Development rules aim to apply sustainable drainage (SuDS) to new or replacement paving around existing homes protect against flooding of properties. Coveyancers can find useful guidance at here . Historically conveyancers need not concern themselves with enquiries about such works. Paving anywhere in a garden related to a house or bungalow with any materials was considered to be ‘permitted development’ – effectively, planning permission without a planning application was automatic But not any more. As awareness of the restrictions grows, there are calls for the legality of recent paving to be covered in conveyancing pre-contract enquiries. Permitted development rights no longer apply for new or replacement drives or other paving unless permeable paving has been used or unless the water drains into a ‘rain garden’ area within the curtilage of the property. In England, these measures took effect in October 2008 and apply to paving over 5m2 and in the front...

One might expect a simple ‘Yes/No’  answer to the following question within the CML Handbook Part 2 : Does the lender require counterpart/certified copy tenancy agreement to be sent to you?  In recent years lenders have shoehorned in all sorts of obligations into their Part 2 requirements and last night’s changes are a good example of how lenders utilise Part 2’s to expand their legal conditions to conveyancers. Investec and The Mortgage Works in answering question 6.6.3 as to whether they require a copy of the tenancy state as follows: No,not required for properties let under a standard Assured Shorthold Tenancy within the meaning of section 20 of the Housing Act 1988 as amended by the Housing Act 1996 and subject to a maximum tenancy term of up to 36 months. If the AST is of 13-36 months duration please notify TMW/Investec accordingly but there is no requirement to send in the tenancy agreement. Where the tenancy is not in the standard form(non AST)a...

No, I am not talking about cardiopulmonary resuscitation,but rather Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (known as CPR). Whilst estate agents have long been obliged to tell the buyer the truth if asked a direct question, the difference is that now they should give information that they suspect may affect the buyer's opinion of a property–-even before the prospective buyer comes to view it. Estate agents have been told by the OFT that they need to comply with the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPR) and the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 (BPR). And these are more powerful in terms of the protection afforded to the buyer than the current Property Misdescriptions Act, which will be repealed in October. This new requirement may potentially impact conveyancing because CPR erodes the doctrine of ‘caveat emptor’, thus offering a new layer of protection to the buyer’s conveyancer. Already one a...

Baron Rothschild, the 18th century British nobleman and member of the Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying, "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." He should know. Rothschild made a fortune buying in the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. On 17 June 2013, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) decided to withdraw all operating licences issued to Balva and commence the winding-up process by appointing a liquidator. Hundreds of law firms who insured with failed Latvian insurer Balva face being caught in an ‘unrated cycle’ after offers from other unrated insurance providers. Balva are the latest of a number of unrated insurers  who have gone to the wall in the last few years. In 2009, Quinn Insurance – which was soon to collapse into administration – lost €333m [£282.7m] in the UK alone, prompting it to pull back from solicitors’ PI. And only last year, another PI provider, Gibraltar-based Lemma Europe I...

PI insurers are still seeing a significant number of claims relating to mortgage redemption statements. A leading insurer recently advised me of a case where the solicitor was completing the sale of his clients' property, on which he knew there were two charges. He had obtained statements on each charge, and on the day of completion he asked a junior colleague to phone the bank for a final figure. His colleague only saw one of the two statements on the file, and the solicitor had not warned her that there were two charges. When he was given the redemption figure, he did not check that the figure included both. He paid the bank the amount that his colleague had been told, and paid the balance to his client, you can guess the rest. To avoid this type of problem you should use a system like COMPLETIONmonitor which can only be signed off by the lawyer. Alternatively, mark the file clearly to show what charges are on a property, together with account numbers. Where po...

Conveycentric has been notified by the Council of Mortgage Lenders that they intend to publish important amendments to the CML Lender's Handbook for England and Wales on July 8, 2013.  Members and relevant stakeholders consulted on the changes for the new Part 1 question added as 5.20.4, which were made necessary by the Green Deal.   The specific new Part 1 question states, "Check Part 2 to see whether we require you to disclose the details of any existing Green Deal Plan(s) on a property".   Simon Seaton, CEO of Conveycentric, commented, "We are grateful to the CML who continue to be very helpful in preparing us for major changes so that we can assist the users of LENDERmonitor and COMPLETIONmonitor.  We will be notifying about 3000 solicitors and conveyancer of lender-specific requirements on July 8th.  We expect amendments to be made to the BSA Mortgage Instructions by October". LENDERmonitor, supported by the CML, provides conveyance...

It is a common misconception amongst the public and conveyancers that the Green Deal creates a legal charge over a property. It does not. The Energy Act 2011 prevents a Green Deal Provider from taking a charge over a person’s property by way of security for payments due under the Plan.

Newbury Building Society and Newbury Mortgage Services Ltd yesterday extended their conveyancing panel requirements by making changes to Section A.12 of their BSA Mortgage Instructions . Acceptance to the panel is now subject to application and subject the following criteria: • The firm must have at least two qualifying partners. • The firm must be registered with the SRA / CLC. • Professional Indemnity Insurance with minimum £2m cover. • For solicitors, the firm must have CQS accreditation. Firms that are set up as Alternative Business Structures are accepted if the underlying legal practice has been in existence at least 5 years and meets the above requirements. Conveyancers that are not on the panel will be invited on receipt of a mortgage application where the client proposes them to act. For commercial applications the lender will instruct their own solicitor (separate legal representation). Contact Newbury Building Society’s Mortgage Underwriting Team 01...

One of the many obligations imposed on a conveyancing solicitor is to check the mortgage documents and ensure that the borrower (client) understands the obligations contained within the mortgage deed but also within the loan offer. This is no doubt one the reasons why the solicitor is sent the mortgage offer in the first place. This is reaffirmed at paragraph 11.1.2 of the CML Handbook which states “You should explain to each borrower (and any other person signing or executing a document) his responsibilities and liabilities under the documents referred to in paragraph 11.1.1 and any documents he is required to sign”. Imagine the shock when Scottish solicitors realised that the HSBC loan documents stated that the conditions were to be governed by English law. Notwithstanding the CML obligations at Paragraph 11.1., the vast majority of Scottish lawyers cannot be expected provide advice on English law contracts. In a recent letter published in the Journal of the Law Society of Scotlan...

Following on from my post Do you have a preferred conveyancing client ? I see similarities between a conveyancing practice and a restaurant. A savvy restaurateur might build up a fine dining, a silver service high- priced venture. Or he might build up a successful business selling fast food meals at the lowest possible prices. Or he could make a success of Indian, Chinese, or Italian cuisine. Each would attract a following. Customers would come expecting a specific kind of meal. However, with all his skill, he could not possibly build up a clientele if, one day he served the costliest meals, the next day low-priced ones, and then, without warning, served nothing but sushi. So too with Conveyancing. The owners of a practice have to decide on their preferred clientele. What end of the spectrum do they want to concentrate on?  Is it the equivalent of fast food--factory conveyancing--or something analogous to a fine dining restaurant where the experienced and qualified lawyer cater...