Adrian J Singleton Limited

If you have used the Help to Buy Scheme to purchase a new property and you are now approaching the end of the discount period, you will want to arrange to redeem the loan and transfer it to a remortgage of your property.

Your mortgage lender will usually provide a desktop valuation to assess the change in the loan you have on the property, but Target HCA will want an entirely independent RICS Red Book-compliant valuation of the property carried out.

We provide a prompt service, attending your property for an inspection and providing you the valuation report within two working days, which is the fastest permissible period allowed by RICS Regulation. A key element of the official procedure is the necessity for the valuer to carry out a study of comparable properties and to give a period of reflection on the true value before it is published.

It is also vitally important to ensure that the valuer compares the property as it was provided at the time of purchase and not to consider home improvements that were not funded by the original loan. Many modern houses are sold with basic equipment and finishes, with optional add-ons that are paid for outside of the mortgage loan. These must be properly listed and excluded from the valuation as special assumptions.

If you are finding it necessary to get a firm indication of where your property boundary is located, you have probably had a look at your Registered Title Plan and discovered that it isn't much help. At the typical scale of 1:1250 or 1:2500 a line covers a wide strip of land.

There is a tried and tested way of getting this boundary measured down to very precise dimensions and for these to be recorded permanently at Land Registry, but to do this you must follow certain steps to smoothly acheive this. You will need your neighbour to agree with you as well, which can actually be a little easier when they have a compelling report and accurate plan drawn up that shows where things ought to be.

Contact me today and I am sure I can help ease the burden of working out the way to resolve this WITHOUT either party involving solicitors. After all, finding a boundary is a surveying matter, not an essentially legal one.

The Party Wall Etc Act 1996 is often abused by so-called 'party wall surveyors', many of whom lack full professional accreditation and experience. Some prey on adjoining owners by reviewing the planning registers of local authorities and attempt to be signed up as appointed surveyors in advance of any notices being served by the building owners.

I am happy to trust in the system Parliament intended to run with this Act. Until a notice has been served (or perhaps requested from a concerned neighbour) there is no legal basis for any surveyor to declare himself as 'appointed' under the Act. The law actually states that a dispute has to have arisen (or deemed to have arisen to a notice) about work to which the Act applies BEFORE surveyors MUST be appointed to determine the matter.

I have, in the past, had to inform unscrupulous surveyors demanding fees and inventing disputes that they are not, in fact, protected by the provision in the Act that, once appointed, they cannot be removed!