Bizarre conveyancing enquiries that will raise a smile  

During the home buying process conveyancers perform lots of checks and meet a lot of enquiries from both buyers and sellers. But while these queries are usually fairly straightforward, some can be slightly more off-the-wall, unusual and downright more amusing than your run-of-the-mill conveyancing enquires. Here are some of our favourites.

In a transaction for the sale of a second floor flat the buyers lawyers said, “please confirm if the property benefits from a conservatory?” When told that the flat was indeed on the second floor the buyer’s lawyer replied, “yes but our enquiry stands”. 

One enquiry asked “has there ever been any paranormal activity at the property. If so please provide further details”. Whereas another prospective buyer of a property named “Smugglers Cottage” wanted to check “if there was a history of any illegal activity being carried out at the property?”. 

“Could the seller please advise whether any catacombs run underneath the property” was an enquiry that actually related to a drainage ditch near the property. Whereas another buyer had confused a structural beam in an elderly seller’s property; “please confirm that the seller will remove the pole dancing pole from the bedroom”. 

In rural areas sellers are often requested to “improve Wi-Fi speed” and have properties connected to mains gas and mains sewerage, particularly by city conveyancers. But, says one Somerset based solicitor, “in the rural countryside we don’t always have gas lines, very often your waste goes into a big tank in your garden and in certain villages there may be just a couple spots where you can actually get Wi-Fi let alone get it in your house!”. 

Some queries relate to confusion around conveyancing terminology, for example, “we are instructed that your client is staircasing simultaneously with the sale. Please confirm the exact nature of the problem with the stairs at the property”. 

And finally, some enquiries are to request that certain objects are included in the sale of the property, such as, “does the sonic mouse scarer thing in the loft mean that the property has mice?”, “If so, please could it be left behind?”.