It seems that the new year has started with a bang in terms of the property market. Mortgage approvals increased by 30% over the same time last year and perhaps even better news is that this time the numbers have finally ben swelled by people taking out a high loan to value –   Loans to borrowers who had deposits of 15% or less made up just 7% of approvals in January 2011, but this figure almost doubled to 13%  last month. The reason this is good news is that it starts to signal first tiem buyers returning to the market – which in turn will have a positive effect going forward.

The figures come from e.surv mortgage monitor.

If you are one of those first time buyers (and even if you aren’t!) and want an instant conveyancing quote then get in touch

Cheers

Mark

Late last week I had a friend contact me about stamp duty avoidance schemes. He is looking to buy a new property and had heard about a scheme whereby you can save some or all of the stamp duty payable. In can you hadn’t realised, Stamp Duty (which is simply a tax you pay when you buy a house over a certain value – currently £125,000) can cost you a lot of money

On a house costing £125,000 it will cost you nothing

On a house costing £125,001 it will cost you £1,250

On a house costing £250,000 it will cost you £2,500

On a house costing £250,001 it will cost you £7,500

On a house costing £500,001 it will cost you £20,000

On a house costing £1,000,001 it will cost you £50,000

We’re talking serious money here. In the last few years some schemes have cropped up where clever lawyers pick apart the wording in the stamp duty legislation to try and find a loophole that means that they don’t have to pay stamp duty, or at least pay a reduced amount. The schemes are often very complicated and sometimes involve money going to a third party or ending up back where it came from.

The difficulty here is that you’re trying to bend the rules and the people who are losing out in this are the people who make the rules. The chances are that these loopholes will be closed sooner or later. The danger is that they will do this retrospectively so the money you’ve saved has to be paid back. There are usually fairly expensive fees to pay as part of these schemes so obviously you’d have paid them out and not get them back. Whether there are any penalties involved I’ve no idea.

First rumblings that the revent aren’t happy came with this release last June http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/avoidance/spotlights10.htm with a stern message indicating that they would seek to recoup any lost revenue “through the courts where appropriate”

This has been followed by further amendments to the stamp duty act specifically to stop these sort of schemes (at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/so/advice75a.htm)

Our advice would be the same advice I was given by my Dad years ago – “if it looks too good to be true then it probably is”. Regardless of whether or not  the schemes are technically correct, the Inland revenue will be looking to crack down on them and you could well end up paying more than you would have done if you just paid for the stamp duty in the first place.

If you need a conveyancing quote then please get in touch

Cheers

Mark

As I said previously things are better than the so-called experts are saying – this is backed up by recent research carried out by  LSL which showed that in August the average UK property price rose – contrary to experts’ predictions that there would be another drop in British house prices.

The research shows that the average cost of purchasing a UK property was £219,078 last month, an increase of 0.3 per cent on July, when average prices were £218,404.

The volume of transactions also rose by 1.5 per cent, which is in contrast to the late summer dip usually observed in the UK housing market, and which backs up our own experiences of the housing market.

David Newnes, director of LSL, said that the overall property market “bounced back” this summer, with consecutive months of price rises following falls between April and June.

“While some regions have seen prices fall, the rate of fall has shrunk. The housing market across the country is moving in the right direction. Prices in London rose most, thanks to all the cash buyers pushing up demand,” he added.

Maybe it’s not just me then

If you want a conveyancing quote then just click on the link

Cheers

Mark

They say there’s no fool like an old fool. At 48 I wouldn’t call myself old (but my kids would all disagree), but it never ceases to amaze me how much the press focus on bad news.

I did a blog a while ago about how the number of Conveyancing transactions we are handling this year are a good deal up on the same time last year (36% up). In my last blog I mentioned that an Estate Agent friend had said firstly he’d had a similar experience with a 40% rise in properties sold, but that he could do a news story on this to the local press because they wouldn’t publish it.

I was chatting to another conveyancer yesterday – one of the largest in the country. They employ people to do their own stories to the media. He said they’ve discovered the same sort of thing – that good news just won’t get published. He said they way they’ve got round it though is to trawl through the statistics being published and find something that backs up a prediction that the end of the world is coming. They then do a story around that publicising their company and so on. This has worked really well for them – and they get some good publicity out of it.

I know that bad news sells newspapers. I just find it amazing that the upshot of that is that the actual news is ignored unless it complies with this doom-laden world view.

I had a look online to see if anyone out there had started a ‘good news’ online newspapers. The good news (see what i did there?) is that they have – the bad news is that they are pretty sad. Happynews.com and GoodnewsNetwork.org both seem a bit ‘firemen rescued a kitten from a tree’ or ‘boy had lost wallet returned’. Just because I don’t want to be painted with the misery brush doesn’t mean I want to go and live on Sesame street either.

Another site, positivenews.org.uk seems to look a bit more grown-up and have some more interesting stories. However when you want to hear the news you want to hear all the news – good and bad. If you go somewhere just to hear the mice stuff you feel you’re missing out on things that may be very important.

What I’d like to see is:-
1. Present ALL the news – good and bad. The stuff in positivenews is actually really interesting – but I don’t think I’d read about any of that in the ‘normal’ press
2. Present the negative stuff in a balanced way. Only last week someone was talking about the financial banking crisis saying we should all calm down, it’s not going to lead to another recession, it’s just part of the swings and roundabouts of the global financial markets and it will come round again after a while. The interviewer was palpably gutted – he wanted a good chunk of misery and was really disappointed that he wasn’t going to get it. This was on the BBC by the way, who are meant to be balanced.
3. Stop flogging a dead horse. Each news story has a life of it’s own. The relentless search for an ever more dismal angle leads to the sort of abuses we’ve heard of recently with the phone-hacking scandal

The thing is, the more you start to write this stuff down, the more you realise it’s not that easy. One person’ bias is another person’s balanced view. A lot of people do panic about stories – that’s how they cope. I do think it’s gone way too far though and I know from personal experience that continually looking on the black side will not help you.

To quote Winston Churchill:-
“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else” – the press could do with taking a leaf out of his book

Cheers

Mark

I have tried to avoid doing blogs the just publicise stuff we’ve done as I think generally people aren’t interested – I try and write things people want to read. However I’ve got so excited about the new version of our case tracker that I need to blog about it (yes I do realise I should get out more)

We have been running an online case tracker for 13 years now – we were the first law firm in the country to introduce such a system. the idea is that you can check on the progress of your case 24/7 . Clients have always loved it. As time has gone on we have evolved the system so that the reports are updated every hour and more information is shown.

We always ask our clients what they think of it at the end of the transaction and some of the feedback has focussed on people thinking the system isn’t updated often enough (occasionally the update system would fall over and the reports might not get an update for a few hours). People also said they sometimes didn’t understand what the steps actually meant  - which isn’t helpful.

With the latest version of the online case tracker I’ve tried to address all these issues and more…

• Regular updates – we’ve made these better by doing away with them altogether! The information we’re showing now is real-time information – it’s like you’re sat next to us while we are working
• Explanations - we’ve added in a little information icon next to each of the steps – if you move your mouse over this icon a little panel pops up explaining what that step actually means. So for example we’ve got a step called “SDLT form submitted online”. If you mouseover the little icon the popup says “The SDLT form is the stamp duty land tax form. It’s quite a complicated form and we have to submit it shortly after completion – it’s paying tax to the government basically in the form of your Stamp Duty“
• Show who you are dealing with - at the top of the page we’ve got a picture of the person who is looking after your file. It’s not a library picture or a model – it’s a real person. We felt it’s always nice to put a face to a name
• Show what’s actually happened - we used to show you a series of steps that we work through on a transaction, and then separately show you a list of notes we’ve made, and so on. It could sometimes be difficult to get to grips with what’s happening. Instead of this we’ve thrown everything that’s happened on a case into a big pot and presented them all in date order. So if 15 file notes were done on one day and a step marked off the next day that’s the order they will be presented in. It give you a much better feel for your case. You can also change the default order if you want to
• Hide unnecessary detail – it’s easy to drown you in detail. We decided that steps that haven’t been marked off yet would be shown at the end but hidden – you can click a link to reveal them or hide them again. This is because it’s nice to be able to see this stuff if you want to but we don’t want it getting in the way of the real substance of what’s happening on your case
• Documents - this was a big change. You can now download and save, view, or print out all the documents coming into your case and going out from your case. The usefulness of this was highlighted to us the day after the system went live. We scanned a letter in at around 8:30. The letter was from the buyers solicitors asking some questionas aboutt he property. We would normally send a letter on to our client (the seller) asking him to let us have the answers to their questions. At around 9:30, unprompted, we got an email from our client saying he’d already seen the list of questions they had raised and let us have the answers.

If you’ve read this far I expect you’ll want to see what all the fuss is about so here is a sample of the new online case tracker

If you’ve got any comment on it then I’d be glad to hear them. The online case tracker is available to all our conveyancing clients free of charge

Cheers

Mark

We have had the highest number of new conveyancing transactions (sales and purchases)  since April 2008 and the month is even over yet. Is the 3 year drought over?

There have been many false dawns over the last 3 years but this is the most positive  piece of real data  I have seen.

I picked up the phone to couple of other substantial conveyancing practices in other parts of the country and they have had similar experiences.

One of the characteristics of the marketplace over the last 3 years has been its inconsistency and we need to see whether this momentum is maintained.

The budget didn’t hold any “nasties”  so I don’t believe that that will stall the market as the previous budget did.

Once people know that their job is secure and how much their monthly mortgage will be then I think that consistency will return.

We will see –  for now  I  am just enjoying the moment.

Cheers,

Matt

Now the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) is involved!

A recent report from the Advertising standards authority has concluded that online adverts by yourconveyancingservices.com was “Misleading”. They were advertising conveyancing for £99 but when you followed it through it turned out to be anything but – the final costs were considerably higher. Although they amended it to read that the prices was ‘From £99′  the ASA didn’t think this went far enough – demanding that

“The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told yourconveyancingservices to amend their ad so that the price quoted included VAT and the ad stated that disbursements were also payable.”

I’ve blogged about misleading conveyancing quotes before – it’s a tough enough world doing conveyancing at the moment without people misrepresenting what they are charging. It all comes back to the old saying – if somethings too good to be true then it probably isn’t.

You can see the full ASA report here

Hi there it’s Matt here – I’ve been asked to add to the blog and so this is my first post. I wasn’t sure what to blog about initially so thought I’d start with something I’ve been dealing with today.

I’ve just been asked by a client to interpret another web sites conveyancing “quote”.  When we came to look at it it turned out that it wasn’t actually a quote, but an estimate.

The problem is that alot of online conveyancers are not being transparent with their prices and only reveal the true cost of the conveyancing later down the line. They give estimates that look very attractive but won’t commit to a final figure at the outset. I think Mark has blogged previously on misleading conveyancing quotes but thought I’d mentioned the”quote vs estimate” point.

So if you’re getting a quote – online or over the telephon, then make sure you’re getting a fixed “quote” and not an “estimate”.

Cheers

Matt

Conveyancing is scary enough without losing your conveyancer part way through the process. Following the problems at Fridays Property Lawyers, we have drawn up a list of questions that affect people who have their conveyancing interrupted by their conveyancer going into liquidation.  For more information and advice, call us or use the main contact form.

“I am worried because my buyers were ready to exchange contracts when this happened.  What will happen to my file?  Is there anything you can do to make sure that contracts are exchanged quickly?”

We wouldn’t recommend letting your file wait for the intervening conveyancer to pick it up.  This could take a number of weeks and lead to delay.  It would be a better idea to instruct another law firm who should take immediate action to retrieve your file.  Simultaneously with attempting to retrieve the file the new solicitor should try and resurrect the work by working with the buyers’ solicitors who would normally be accommodating and sympathetic towards your plight.  The priority has to be to exchange contracts as quickly as possible.  If the buyers are indeed ready to exchange contracts it would be feasible to try and exchange within seven days of your new solicitors receiving the file.

“I am selling, and I’d instructed Fridays Property Lawyers to prepare the paperwork in readiness for finding a buyer.  I’ve now found a buyer but am worried that there will be delay.”

The best thing to do here would be to appoint new solicitors to prepare all the paperwork from scratch.  This might seem to be a bit tedious in that you’d would have to give your new solicitor all your details again but it is possible to issue a comprehensive set of papers quickly.  The estate agent needs to be advised of the new solicitor so that a new Sales Memorandum can be issued with immediate effect.

“I completed my leasehold purchase a few weeks ago and have received fairly threatening communications from the landlords managing agents that they have not received a Notice of Transfer and Charge of the property (in other words the property is not registered in my name).  What should I do?”

Part of the registration formalities on a leasehold property is to serve notice on the landlord or managing agent of the new buyer’s ownership.  Failure to do this is a breach of the lease and could result in penalties and legal costs.  It is a good idea to instruct a solicitor to take over the leasehold completion formalities but also check that the Land Registry formalities have been finalised and that the stamp duty has been paid.  Your new solicitor should immediately make contact with the managing agents and let them know the position.  Hopefully they would be relatively understanding.  The file will need to be retrieved and the notices prepared.  The costs of this should hopefully be met by the CLC Compensation Fund.

I have been trying to call Fridays Property Lawyers over the last few days and cannot get through.  I am very concerned because I have signed my contract and was about to exchange.  What can I do now, I am very concerned that the sellers will lose their patience and decide to remarket the property.

First things first you should speak to the estate agents and be perfectly honest with them.  The chances are that the sellers will sympathise with your situation especially bearing in mind that it is not your fault.  You need to immediately arrange to instruct a new firm of solicitors to retrieve your file as quickly as possible.  Simultaneously with attempting to retrieve the file they should get in touch with the sellers’ lawyers and possibly, if the Sellers’ solicitors are prepared to be obliging, arrange for a new set of documents to be sent over to be reviewed.  One thing that is important to understand is that any newly instructed solicitor is unlikely to rely on the investigations carried out by the previous lawyer (understandably, they will simply not have the confidence that the investigations were carried out thoroughly).   Therefore, undoubtedly here there will be a delay in the transaction but hopefully, assuming you appoint the right property lawyers, they will drive the transaction through quickly.  You need to be sure in appointing a new firm that they are going to prioritise your case.  If the new firm is going to charge over and above what you were quoted by Fridays you should check that they would be willing to claim the additional cost directly from the CLC.

“I have exchanged contracts and am at the point of completion. I understand that the mortgage advance was sent to Fridays by my lender. I have not been able to get hold of anyone at Fridays Property Lawyers . The seller called me directly yesterday and I have explained the situation to her but I am concerned about my money and whether or not I am now liable for the mortgage.”

It is not necessarily the case that the mortgage money or indeed any money has been misappropriated. The first thing to do is to find out what has happened to your file. You can either do this directly or you can appoint new solicitors to investigate this for you. It will be quicker for the new solicitors to have the file and the funds transferred. They will then be able to deal with the exchange and completion. Any new firm would want to review the paperwork in full anyway and it is certainly advisable that the property is thoroughly reviewed before committing to exchange and completion. If you want the file transferred you will need to speak to a broker and arrange for the mortgage offer to be reissued to the new lawyers.

The new lawyer should immediately make contact with the sellers’ lawyers and explain the situation to them. Hopefully, they will take the view that it is worth giving you a couple of weeks in which to exchange and complete the transaction as opposed to remarket the property and go through the whole conveyancing process with a new buyer. If you need further advice or guidance, do not hesitate to call us ASAP, or contact us via our main contact LegalMove page

If you have any questions other than those we’ve covered above then please don’t hesitate to get in touch – either via our contact page or by adding a comment below. Alternatively if you want a fresh conveyancing quote go to our free conveyancing quote page

Cheers

Mark