Cheaper to buy a home rather than rent
First-time buyers are financially better off buying a property rather than renting because of falling house prices
Cut-price HIPS boost interest
Solicitors could oust estate agents as the first port of call for home sellers if a trend started in Merseyside catches on nationally, a conveyancer claims.
Society proposes conveyancing shake-up
A chain matrix-style online portal and an updated conveyancing protocol are among measures outlined in a Law Society consultation published today to improve the home-buying and selling process.
The electronic conveyancing portal will enable parties to track the progress of their transaction. Unlike the scheme trialled by the Land Registry’s chain matrix, parties will not initially be able to see the stage reached by other parties in the chain.
Power in numbers: making sense of the numbers behind commercial litigation
There are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’, said the Victorian politician Benjamin Disraeli (allegedly), but numbers and statistics can also help uncover the truth – or at least the facts.
Numbers also mean hard evidence to econometricians, and solicitors who deal with competition and commercial cases are using these specialists increasingly often.
Survey finds consumers sceptical about banks and supermarkets’ legal services
Consumers are ‘sceptical’ about banks and supermarkets providing legal services because they have concerns about the quality of work, according to a major opinion poll.
A survey of public attitudes towards solicitors, commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and released this week, found that 69% of respondents ‘agree they would be concerned about the quality of service offered by these organisations’.
Objective selection criteria for redundancy
The problem with the regulations is that they have caused companies to question whether LIFO is in breach of the regulations by favouring those with longer service (who are statistically likely to be older). Unpopular as it is with some employers, this has led some to try and use the regulations to justify a choice of different criteria at the outset and others to try and exclude it from their existing schemes.
FSA unveils tougher fines for financial wrongdoing
The FSA is proposing tougher penalties for financial wrongdoing, with some fines set to treble in size. Under the proposals, fines for misbehaviour such as misselling to consumers will be tied more closely to income. Financial institutions could face fines of up to 20 per cent of their revenue from the product or business area linked to the breach.
Rent increases in periodic tenancies
Most landlords know that after the fixed term of a tenancy has ended, if it is an assured or an assured shorthold tenancy, section 5 of the Housing Act 1988 intervenes and provides for a new ‘periodic’ tenancy to be created.
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Bankruptcy Info: Try to understand it
If any individual is impaired or not able to pay off their creditors then it is known as bankruptcy. The individuals and business establishments initiate the process of bankruptcy normally but sometimes a group of creditors can also ask for a declared state of bankruptcy in order to recover the money owed to them.
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