Residential Conveyancing

We are panel solicitors for most building societies and banks, so we are usually able to act for your Mortgage Lender. We have direct access to Stamp Duty Land Tax Office, Land Registry databases, and other data bases enabling us to be at the forefront of residential property conveyancing and executive quick and effective searches to ensure your transactions progress quickly.  

Our Services include:

  • Purchase (Freehold & Leasehold)
  • Sale (Freehold & Leasehold)
  • Assent
  • Enfranchisement
  • Right to Buy & Shared Ownership Purchases
  • Auction Property Conveyancing
  • Lease Extensions
  • Declaration of Trusts
  • Transfer of Equity
  • Matrimonial Transfers
  • Remortgages
  • Deeds of Gift
  • Purchase under company
  • Help To Buy /Help To Buy ISA

Matrimonial and Family

Divorce is stressful and often very expensive. Practical and solution-based legal advice is key to achieve a fair outcome. We aspire to achieve our clients’ aims and objectives and guide them every step of the way. Our services are: 

  • Divorce
  • Financial Settlements
  • Pre and Post-Nuptial Agreements
  • Cohabitation / Civil Partnership
  • Children Matters
  • Domestic Violence Injunctions
  • Adoption

Private Client

 

We are committed to a high-quality service with a caring and sympathetic approach. Clients often contact us at a difficult time in their lives, perhaps following a bereavement or when an elderly relative can no longer cope with decision-making. We offer a practical and tailored service, as well as discretion, confidentiality and a high level of professionalism.

Our Private Client department can advise on: 

  • The preparation of new Wills
  • Obtaining Deputyship Orders
  • Lasting Powers of Attorney
  • Estate Administration.  

We work closely with the Office of the Public Guardian, Probate Registry and HM Revenue and Customs, enabling us to offer the latest advice with confidence.

 

Commercial Real Estate

We act for a wide range of clientele – entrepreneurs starting a new business or selling a business, a well-known franchise expanding business, landlords granting a new lease or renewing an existing lease, established developers acquiring lands for residential and commercial development, and financing acquisition. Our services in brief:

  • Acquisition of commercial property
  • Lease negotiations
  • Grant of a new lease
  • Lease renewals
  • Rent review negotiations
  • Landlord & Tenant matters
  • Commercial finance and refinance
  • Option Agreements
  • Overage Agreements
  • Disposal of freehold commercial property
  • Acquisition of leasehold property

We handle all types of transactions and take a ‘hands-on approach’ to get the deal done and make sure that our clients’ interests are protected at all times. 

Please enquire for a fixed fee quote. 

Civil Litigation & Employment Law

Litigation can be quite stressful and expensive if the right guidance and advice is not provided from the outset. We aspire to find amicable resolution thorough negotiation and we believe court proceedings should be the last resort. When litigation is unavoidable, we are relentless in our pursuit to achieve a fair outcome for our clients keeping costs under check. We also deal with contentious employment matters, especially negotiating settlement agreements and other related issues.

Our litigation services are: 

  • Commercial Litigation 
  • Debt recovery 
  • Employment matters
  • Settlement Agreement
  • Residential and Commercial Possession claims
  • Residential Landlord and tenant disputes 
  • General Litigation
  • Neighbour Disputes  

Our Estimated Fees:

Our fees are structured to ensure transparency. We charge an hourly rate based on the experience of the solicitor or legal professional working on your case. To give you an idea, our rates typically range from £150 +VAT per hour for trainee solicitors or paralegals, legal secretaries £135 +VAT per hour and senior for highly experienced solicitors £295 +VAT per hour. We will provide a detailed fee estimate tailored to your specific needs before commencing any work. 

Private Client: Our fees to obtain a Grant of Representation and administer a straightforward (uncontested) estate based entirely in England and Wales will vary. We will charge on a time-spent basis on our hourly rate, currently £295 +VAT. These rates form a basis for our fees. 

Disbursements for Probate files are likely to be: 

Grant of Representation Fee : £300 (plus £1.50 for additional copies);
Share valuation                       £40 – £50 
Certainty Will Search              £38 – £199 +VAT

 

Residential Conveyancing: Our fees for a typical house sale or purchase range from around £999 +VAT for a simple transaction to around £5,000 +VAT for a substantial historic building on unregistered land. Reasonable disbursements also apply i.e. Land Registry fee, SDLT, Office copies and others. Please enquire for a fixed fee quote.

Civil Litigation, Matrimonial and Family Law: We will charge on a time-spent basis on our hourly rate, currently £275 +VAT. These rates form a basis for our fees. Please enquire for a fee quote. 

Commercial Real Estate: In general we work on a fixed fee basis depending on the type and size of the transaction. For a new lease of a high street shop, our estimated fee would be £1500 +VAT and reasonable disbursements; which usually are: 

Estimated disbursements for property conveyancing:

AML Search: £7.20
Land Registry Priority Search: £3.90
Land Registry Bankruptcy Search: £3.90
Bank Transfer & Admin Fee: £35 + VAT
Land Registry Office Copy – £3.90 estimated
Searches-  it depends on property and location

Our standard hourly rate of £295 +VAT will apply for a more complex and contentious transaction. 

The basis for our Fees for Conveyancing matters

Our fee typically covers the followings:  

  • Review, negotiate and advise on the lease deeds, rent deposit deeds and licence to assign.
  • Preparing and supplying a sales pack incorporating draft contract, title documents and property information forms.
  • Agreeing contract and transfer documentation.
  • Answering additional enquiries from the buyers solicitors.
  • Exchanging contracts and completing transfer.
  • If relating to a leasehold, obtaining the management information pack and providing it to the buyers’ solicitors.
  • Considering the sales pack prepared by the sellers solicitors.
  • Investigating the title and reporting to you.
  • Commissioning searches and advising on the results.
  • Raising appropriate enquiries.
  • Reviewing a mortgage offer and reporting to the lender (where appropriate).
  • Exchanging contracts and completing transfer.
  • Filing the stamp duty or land transaction return for you (where appropriate).
  • Registration at the Land Registry.

Complaint Policy and Procedure

Our aim is to offer all our clients an efficient and effective service at all times We hope that you will be pleased with the work we do for you.

If you have any problem with the service we have provided for you then please let us know, this could include a complaint about the firm’s bill. We aim to resolve any problem quickly and operate an internal complaint’s handling system to help to resolve the problem between ourselves. Please raise your concern in the first place with the person handling your case. If you still have queries or concerns, Barry Hubert is the Complaints’ Partner to whom any difficulty can be reported. He can be contacted on 0208 641 2771 or by e-mail bh@vbllp.co.uk. He is based at Nonsuch House 538-542 London Road, Cheam, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9AA.

In the first instance you must try to resolve your complaint through our complaints handling process. If you are unhappy with the outcome, or if we have failed to resolve your complaint within eight weeks, and we acted for you as an: individual; a small business; charity; club; or trust, you can ask the Legal Ombudsman, whose address is P O Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ (www.legalombudsman.org.uk), telephone 0300 555 0333, email enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk to become involved to become involved.

The legal ombudsman’s time limit for accepting a complaint is six years from the date of the act/omission, and three years from when the complainant should have known about the issue. These time limits will be extended gradually from the 6th October 2010 (The date the Legal Ombudsman opened for business). However, the Ombudsman will continue to accept complaints about issues that happened before the 6th October 2010 if the complainant only became aware of it after this date.

These rules also apply to prospective clients who could reasonably have expected to receive a service or who were unreasonably offered a service they did not want.

If you would like a copy of our written complaint’s procedure, please let us know and we will send it to you.

In addition to your right to object to our bill by making a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, you may also have a right to apply to the court for an assessment of our bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. Please note that the Legal Ombudsman may not deal with your complaint regarding your bill if you have applied to the court for assessment of that bill.

If the services we have provided relate to proceedings in a Court or tribunal, you may additionally be entitled to have the amount of our fees checked or assessed under Rules of Court and regulations applying to the particular proceedings, or under the inherent jurisdiction of the tribunal before which the proceedings have taken, or are taking, place. If all or part of our bill remains unpaid whilst you dispute it, the firm may be entitled to charge interest.