Conveyancing Solicitor Response Times

Mrcsmrs

steampowered said:

A lot of conveyancers are not solicitors, and even those that are often claim they are not SDLT experts - certainly much less knowledgeable about the technicalities of SDLT than the fantastic SDLT geek ! It's entirely possible you might get referred to a tax adviser if your case is difficult.

Could it be worth keeping your mortgage at a higher amount regardless of the answer to your SDLT query?

You can put the additional £20k into a stocks & shares ISA, where it is likely to generate far superior returns to the interest you will be paying on the mortgage. You would have the flexibility to sell the ISA and overpay the mortgage in future if you decided you wanted to do that.

Thank you. I did choose a solicitor who appeared to know his stuff at our initial call, and he has been quite open with me about the 3% surcharge, I just think he doesn’t think MDR can be applied in addition. He asked me to get a specialist opinion so I did that and my query was asking him if he could work with the specialist (at my cost) to resolve it for us. As it goes I think we will have to take the mortgage out as if the extra is needed because it would be far worse to be short!