Harvey Gibbs

“The ground rent on my lease is more than £250. Should I be worried?” This is a question which many leaseholders, and buyers of leasehold properties, have been asking in recent years. The chances are that if...

What sort of things should you worry about when buying a property? The neighbours? Any new housing estates that are likely to be built in the locality? Possibly. However, if you are buying the property jointly with someone else then perhaps the thing that...

England’s long-awaited victory over Germany came on the eve of the last day of the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) “Holiday”. It was therefore with some very sore heads that Conveyancers in England arrived at work on 30 June faced with the...

Digital signatures in conveyancing – the way forward? Since July 2021 the Land Registry has been prepared to accept electronic signatures as a means of executing deeds in conveyancing transactions. The concept of electronic signatures was not...

I regularly receive calls from clients who are interested in a property they have seen which is to be sold by way of an auction. Occasionally the first we hear about it is when our client telephones to say that they were the successful bidder at an auction...

The payment of a service charge to cover the cost of maintaining communal facilities is well established for leasehold properties, such as apartments. What is not so well known however is that freehold houses can also be subject to a service charge, or an...

Perhaps now is the time for a reminder about the risk of becoming the victim of a property fraud. This is particularly so given that since March 2020 many of us in the property industry have been working from home, with most communications with clients and...

Perhaps surprisingly, a regular enquiry that I receive from clients concerns what is known as “adverse possession” of land. The public perception of this is that it is all about squatters who have seized possession of a building. However, most of...