Property

Conveyancers have urged Chancellor Rishi Sunak not to extend the stamp duty holiday and instead focus on allowing those who have instructed a lawyer by a certain date to complete.

A solicitor left clients “high and dry” by failing to register their property purchases and pay stamp duty, while misappropriating some £175,000 of their money, a tribunal has found.

The average conveyancing firm completed 21% fewer transactions last year, although the market did rebound strongly at the end of the year, with transaction volumes up 27% in just one month.

A veteran solicitor did not confirm that his imprisoned client had given instructions to transfer a £300,000 property to his mother, with the client claiming after it happened that he knew nothing about it.

A large number of conveyancers are focused on growing their businesses this year, even though some have struggled to cope with the workload of a hot property market, research has found.

Conservative and Labour MPs have warned of the danger that the property market will fall off a “cliff edge” when the stamp duty holiday ends at the end of March.

MPs will next week debate a petition signed by over 130,000 people calling for a six-month extension to the stamp duty land tax holiday, which is due to end on 31 March.

The High Court has rejected an “unmeritorious” negligence claim against a barrister brought by a former law lecturer acting as a litigant in person.

The time-limited nature of the stamp duty land tax holiday is why people are looking to use it, the government has said in response to conveyancers’ call to extend it.

The housing minister has written to local authorities whose delays in returning searches are putting conveyancers under pressure ahead of the stamp duty holiday deadline on 31 March.

The body that represents property search companies has written to conveyancers’ representatives to set out ground rules for using search insurance at a time when councils are struggling to deliver.

Leading conveyancing firm O’Neill Patient – which was last year bought by a private equity firm – has spent £27m to buy a platform providing services to mortgage brokers and estate agents.

Dubious investment schemes involving solicitors are becoming “far more sophisticated” and leading to a “huge number of claims” on the Compensation Fund, the SRA has warned.

A solicitor whose conduct of several property transactions has triggered multi-million-pound negligence claims against his former firm has now been struck off.

Transparency over referral fees in conveyancing work will drive out bad practice, a government official said yesterday, while also calling for greater consistency in how law firms publish their prices.