Course outline

As a property lawyer, you are expected to manage client expectations while staying one step ahead of the risks. That becomes far harder when you are having to assess a conveyancing transaction built on limited, imperfect or evolving information.

This course highlights a selection of transactions that can quickly go wrong, and the issues within them that, if missed or mishandled, can lead to complaints, claims or sleepless nights.

We will examine practical solutions and approaches that can be adapted to the complex, fact-specific issues that can arise in tricky transactions.

The main points covered by this course will include:

• What can be done where the property shares a drainage system but there are no adequate mutual rights or obligations between the owners?
• A listed building that has been altered without the required listed building cons: understanding and managing the enforcement risks.
• Missing or incomplete deeds: absent access rights, boundary uncertainty, and covenants where the wording or context cannot be established.
• Defective rights of way: key legal and practical risks for buyers,
• Planning uncertainty: seller claims works were permitted development — but do they really fall within PD?
• The seller wants to withhold key information: risks to the client and the conveyancer.
• Breach of restrictive covenant: multiple breaches, height restrictions, and building scheme issues.

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Feedback from Stephen’s previous sessions

• Stephen was able to maintain interest on topics
• He is very informative and engaging
• Stephen was very knowledgeable. His examples are very relevant
• He provides a very helpful thorough overview 

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Speaker

Stephen Desmond

Since 2004, Stephen Desmond has delivered more than 1,900 CPD events to lawyers from a variety of backgrounds, with a particular focus on flat and apartment leases and practical solutions.  Delegates at these events have included practitioners from a variety of size of firms, ranging from sole practitioners to City Solicitors.

Stephen is a contributing editor to Butterworths Property Law Service, writing on the complex law relating to long and short leases.  He has written for a monthly publication on the subject of commercial property. He also once ran a university-accredited distance-learning course for aspiring paralegals in the subject of residential conveyancing.

A non-practising Solicitor with several years post-qualification experience, Stephen has represented many business and private clients, including property investors and local authorities.