My partner and I are looking to acquire a property in Darwen and have appointed a Darwen conveyancing practice. Within the last couple of days our conveyancer has forwarded the sale agreement to be signed with a detailed report in anticipation of exchanging contracts shortly. TSB have this evening contacted us to inform me that they have now hit a problem as our Darwen solicitor is not on their approved list of lawyers. Is this a problem?

If you are buying a property requiring a mortgage it is conventional for the purchasers' solicitors to also represent the purchaser's lender. In order to act for a bank or building society a law firm has to be on that lender's conveyancing panel. An application has to be made by the law firm to the lender to become a member of the lender's panel and there are increasingly strict criteria which the firm has to satisfy and indeed some lenders now require their panel members to be part of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Accreditation Scheme. Your solicitor should contact your bank and see if they can apply for membership of their conveyancing panel, but if that is not viable they will instruct their own lawyers to represent them. You are not legally obliged to appoint a law firm on the bank's conveyancing panel as you are at liberty to use your preferred Darwen lawyers, in which case it will likely add costs, and it will likely delay the transaction as you have another set of people involved.

The vendors of the property we are hoping to buy are using a conveyancing practitioner in Darwen who has suggested a lock out agreement with a non-refundable deposit of 5k. Are such agreements sensible?

This kind of preliminary agreement isn't common in Darwen, conveyancers will often sway clients away from them as they divert attention from the main conveyancing focus and if you end up losing your deposit then the solicitor at best left with an upset client and at worst a litigious one. Secondly, there is no guarantee that just because the proprietor has executed a lock out contract they will complete the sale with you. They may be in contravention of the contract if they are offered a large enough offer to do so because a wronged claimant with the benefit of a exclusivity agreement will still be obliged establish consequential losses from the breach and this may not amount to the extra amount that your vendor may gain by reneging on the agreement, however morally condemnable that may be.

Are there restrictive covenants that are commonly identified during conveyancing in Darwen?

Covenants that are restrictive in nature can be picked up when reviewing land registry title as part of the process of conveyancing in Darwen. An 1874 stipulation that was seen was ‘The houses to be erected on the estate are each to be of a uniform elevation in accordance with the drawings to be prepared or approved by the vendor’s surveyor…’

I'm buying my first flat in Darwen with a loan from Halifax. The developers would not reduce the amount so I negotiated £7000 of extras instead. The estate agent told me not to tell my lawyer about the deal as it may impact my loan with the bank. Do I keep my lawyer in the dark?.

All lenders require a Disclosure of Incentives Form from the developer of any new build, converted or renovated property, It is available online from the Lenders’ Handbook page on the CML website. CML form is completed and handed to the lender's surveyor when the inspection is done.

Lenders have different policies on incentives. Some accept none at all, cash or physical, while others will accept cash incentives up to 5%.

Hard to understand why the representative of a builder would be suggesting you withold information from a solicitor when all this will be clearly visible on forms the builder has to supply to its solicitor, the buyer's solicitor and the surveyor.

Hoping to buy a property located in Darwen and I am already nervous. I couldn't find anything specific about Darwen. Conveyancing will be needed in due course but do you know about the Darwen area? or perhaps some other tips you can share?

Rather than looking online forget looking online you should go and have a look at Darwen. In the meantime here are some basic statistics that we found