Conveyancing Searches Worth Those Legal Fees

Changes in the way we legislate these days are really making some people think that recourse to the courts is an automatic right, privilege and way to carry on whenever there is a dispute.  In most families, the only contact any of us have with a legal team is when we buy a property and as a safety measure, we engage a conveyancing lawyer to ensure our purchase is deal with absolutely correctly.  We can do a few things ourselves, but for the fairly small sums saved in relation to the massive cost of getting something corrected by a conveyancing lawyer at a later date, it is really never worth trying to cut corners or costs.  This happened to a family known to us when buying their dream house in a gorgeous ‘sleepy, idyllic stone village’.  They didn’t engage a conveyancing solicitor until things went wrong – the mortgage company discovered discrepancies between first offer and contract stage so refused to confirm their offer.   One of the points overlooked was chancel repairs . . .   searches would have discovered the cottage lay within lands previously owned by the church can be affected by a very ancient and long standing covenant.  Indemnity against these costs is usually less than £250 – well worth every penny when a chancel repair charge can run in the hundreds of thousands. Take note..