Conveyancing Panel?

Zephyr78

Hi,

We have just had a verbal offer on a property accepted, this is the first time we have bought a property in the UK as we had previously lived abroad for a number of years.

Fortunately for us our deposit has been held in our bank account abroad (following our house sale over there) so has done very well post brexit. The property we are buying isn't our dream home but will allow us to buy on my salary alone.

We are looking to use HSBC for our mortgage, but having looked around at Solicitors for conveyancing I'm not sure who to go with! I understand the HSBC panel on the face of it looks like they will be a £100-£200 cheaper however I'm a bit dubious about that!! We are based in North Yorkshire so would welcome any recommendations anyone may have.

Also I'm not sure what the next stages are, will the HSBC arrange for the Survey to be completed or can we do that ourselves?

We want to move quickly and have no chain on either side so just want to be clear of what we need to do so we don't hold anything up.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

eddddy

Zephyr78 wrote: »

We are looking to use HSBC for our mortgage, but having looked around at Solicitors for conveyancing I'm not sure who to go with! I understand the HSBC panel on the face of it looks like they will be a £100-£200 cheaper however I'm a bit dubious about that!! We are based in North Yorkshire so would welcome any recommendations anyone may have.

Just to clarify how this works...

A) You will need a solicitor to look after your interests (who you will pay for)
HSBC will need a solicitor to look after their interests (who you will also pay for)

If you use a solicitor on HSBC's panel, one solicitor can do both A and B.

If you don't use a solicitor on HSBC's panel, you will instruct a solicitor to do A, and HSBC will instruct a solicitor from their panel to do B.

Having two solicitors is likely to cost you more and take longer. But if you don't like/trust the panel solicitors, perhaps that's worth it.

Zephyr78 wrote: »

Also I'm not sure what the next stages are, will the HSBC arrange for the Survey to be completed or can we do that ourselves?

HSBC will instruct a valuer to visit the property. They will take a cursory look at the property - to provide a valuation and to determine whether it's suitable security for the mortgage. (They might "Yes" or "No" straight away, or they might say they require you to arrange a more detailed survey.)

But you may want a more comprehensive survey anyway. You can arrange this yourself - or you can usually tell HSBC that you want their valuer to do a survey at the same time (which you would pay for).