How much has your street changed in 25 years?

Letting a London home is no longer "lightly" regulated. It is a fully regulated activity, and compliance is non-negotiable — the difference between owning a rental and committing a criminal offence.

The non-negotiables for every tenancy:

• Gas safety certificate — annual, by a Gas Safe engineer
• Electrical EICR — every five years, NICEIC-registered
• Valid EPC, rating E or above — F and G are illegal to let
• Deposit protected within 30 days in a government-approved scheme, with prescribed information served
• Right-to-Rent checks on every adult occupier
• Government "How to Rent" guide issued at sign-up and re-issued at renewal
• Working smoke alarms on every floor + a CO alarm in any room with a gas appliance

On top of that, borough-level licensing. Every London council now runs schemes, and they vary street by street:

• Selective licensing in designated areas (Wandsworth runs one — check your road)
• Additional HMO licensing for shared houses of three or more occupants from two or more households
• Mandatory HMO licensing for any larger HMO of five or more

Letting an unlicensed property is a criminal offence and rent-repayment-order territory — tenants can claim back up to twelve months of rent.

And the Renters' Rights Bill changes the ground rules again — ending Section 21 ("no-fault") evictions, scrapping fixed-term ASTs, bringing in a national landlord register, and forcing every landlord into a redress scheme.

One missing certificate, one expired licence, and the penalty can outweigh a full year of rent. Our managed landlords don't think about any of this — we handle every line of it.

Most people use a conveyancer once or twice in their entire life. That asymmetry — they do this every day, you do it rarely — is exactly why the industry can get away with patchy service.

The cheapest firms run at volume, give you a paralegal you'll never speak to, and the file drifts. This is the single biggest reason chains collapse. Knowing how to choose, manage and — if needed — complain about your solicitor is half the battle. The rest of this section is the manual nobody hands you.

The smartest move a seller can make — and almost nobody does it.

Before you accept a buyer's offer, ask which firm they intend to instruct, and make using a competent conveyancer a condition of acceptance. A good agent already knows which local firms are responsive and which are catastrophes — we keep a working list.

Reasonable phrasing:

• "We're happy to accept your offer, subject to you instructing a conveyancer with a strong recent track record — your agent can advise."
• "We'll accept, subject to your solicitor being one of these three firms we have worked successfully with."

You're not being unreasonable. You're protecting the chain from a slow firm before the chain even begins. A motivated buyer with a good solicitor agrees instantly; a buyer who pushes back is a buyer you probably want to know about now, not in three months.

In a converted Victorian house — the bread and butter of SW London — the most valuable square footage nobody quite owns is the loft. Who has the right to it is buried in the small print of the lease, and most leases are vague.

Three scenarios, every flat with a roof above it:

• Loft demised to the top-floor flat. The top-floor owner owns the loft space (subject to planning and any freeholder consent for the conversion itself). This is gold — a successful loft conversion routinely adds £80–150k+ to a flat in this area.
• Loft retained by the freeholder. The top-floor owner cannot convert without buying the loft rights — typically £30–80k, sometimes more if the freeholder knows what it's worth.
• Lease is silent or ambiguous. Nobody actually knows. Resolving it needs a deed of variation agreed by every leaseholder in the building plus the freeholder — slow, expensive, and sometimes impossible if one neighbour refuses to play.

What it means for the price. A top-floor flat where the loft is unambiguously demised is worth materially more than one where it isn't. Most buyers — and most agents — never ask. A good conveyancer reads the lease on day one and flags the position before you commit to a number.

What to check, what to ask:

• For top-floor flats: does the lease demise the loft? Confirmed in the lease plan and the red-lined boundary? If not — is it retained by the freeholder, or silent?
• Has a previous owner already extended into the loft? If so, was it done with the proper lease consents and a deed of variation? An unauthorised conversion is a title defect that bites at the next sale.
• For share-of-freehold buildings: do the other flat-owners support a future loft conversion? Get it in writing — ideally as a side-deed — before exchange.

This is exactly where a cheap, volume-driven conveyancer fails you — they tick boxes, they don't read the lease properly, and the loft question quietly evaporates. A local conveyancer who has read fifty Victorian-conversion leases this year will spot the wording in five minutes. The difference is tens of thousands of pounds.

Your conveyancer is a regulated professional with duties to you — not the buyer, not the agent, not the lender. Under the SRA Code of Conduct they must:

• Give you a competent and timely service
• Keep you informed of progress and respond in a reasonable time
• Provide clear costs upfront, including likely disbursements
• Act in your best interests and flag any conflicts
• Operate a written complaints procedure — by law, on request

If they aren't doing these things, they are in breach. You have leverage — use it.

The most common reason a file stalls isn't laziness — it's that nobody on the other end owns it. A junior fee-earner handles the day-to-day, a partner signs off, a paralegal manages enquiries, your emails arrive in a generic team@ inbox. When responsibility is diffused, nothing gets chased.

Symptoms:

• Emails forwarded into the void with no one replying
• Nobody can answer a simple progress question without "checking"
• The same enquiry asked twice because nobody re-read the file

Fix at instruction: insist on a single named person, with direct email and direct phone. Refuse to be passed to "the team." If you can't get that commitment up front, walk to a firm that will give it.

Any one of these is a red flag. Several together means you're being taken for a ride:

• No reply for 10+ working days with no explanation
• "I'll come back to you tomorrow" repeated three times
• The same question asked twice because they haven't re-read your file
• You're told to email a different person — and that person tells you to email a third
• The other side has answered an enquiry and yours hasn't logged it
• Vague "awaiting searches" or "with my supervisor" for weeks, with no detail

None of these are normal. Each is grounds to chase formally and, if it continues, escalate.

You have the most influence at three specific moments:

• At instruction. Pin down expectations in writing: weekly progress updates as a minimum, a single named contact, the complaints procedure on file.
• After every milestone. Contracts received, searches back, enquiries raised, enquiries answered, mortgage offer in, exchange. Each milestone is your moment to ask: "what's the next one, and when?"
• Before exchange. Anything you want clarified or fixed must be raised now. After exchange you're locked in.

Outside these windows your conveyancer expects to be left alone. Inside them, push.

1. Chase in writing, with a specific deadline ("please respond by Friday with status on X, Y, Z"). Always email, not phone — you need a paper trail.

2. Ask for the firm's complaints procedure. They are legally required to have one and to give it to you on request. This usually wakes a partner up.

3. If unresolved after eight weeks, escalate — for free — to the Legal Ombudsman (legalombudsman.org.uk). They have real teeth.

4. For misconduct (lost money, dishonesty, conflicts), report to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (sra.org.uk). Separate process from a service complaint.

Don't wait politely. Solicitor drift kills sales — every week of silence is risk.

A Legal Ombudsman finding can compel a firm to:

• Refund some or all of your fees
• Pay you compensation — up to £50,000
• Redo the work at no further cost
• Issue a written apology

The finding goes on the firm's record. Repeat findings get escalated to the regulator.

An SRA referral for serious misconduct — mishandling client money, dishonesty, conduct breaches — can lead to fines, restrictions on practice, suspension, or being struck off. Every solicitor's name is searchable on the SRA register, and a finding is permanent.

You don't have to be aggressive. The moment "Legal Ombudsman" appears in your email, most solicitors become extremely responsive — because their firm absolutely does not want a finding on file. Naming the route is usually enough.

The most frustrating scenario in conveyancing: your solicitor is sharp, theirs is dreadful. The file drifts and your own firm alone cannot fix it.

What actually moves the needle:

• Have your solicitor escalate inside their firm. Ask them to email the other side's supervising partner directly — not the fee-earner who's been silent.
• Have your agent chase the other agent, who chases the buyer/seller directly. Two pincers work better than one.
• If you're the seller, let the other side know — politely — that the legal hold-up is on their side and that you have other interested parties. This often reaches their solicitor faster than yours can.
• Worst case: the buyer can replace their own solicitor mid-transaction. Painful, expensive, but sometimes the only thing that saves the chain.

And it's another argument for making a competent solicitor a condition of acceptance up front — the cheapest moment to fix this is before it starts.

• File opened, ID verified, contract pack out: 1–2 weeks of instruction
• Replies to standard enquiries: 5–10 working days
• Local searches returned: 10–15 working days (some councils slower)
• Exchange to completion: typically 1–2 weeks (anything is negotiable)

If your conveyancer is silent for 10+ working days with no explanation, something is wrong. Chase. Escalate.

A template that establishes a paper trail, sets a deadline, and quietly signals you know your rights — without making an empty threat. Copy, fill in, send.

Three more templates — formal complaint, partner escalation, Legal Ombudsman intent — are in the full guide.