Birmingham's conveyancers deal with a quirk that surprises buyers from elsewhere: a large number of the city's houses, not just its flats, are leasehold, many of the leases created when the Victorian suburbs were laid out. A terrace in Kings Heath or a semi in Erdington may come with a lease, a ground rent and a freeholder to track down, and lease extensions and freehold purchases are everyday work for a Birmingham property solicitor.
The rest of the city's housing stock is just as varied. City-centre and Jewellery Quarter apartments bring service charges, building safety paperwork and letting restrictions to check. Selly Oak, Harborne and Edgbaston are dense with student lets, where landlords need licences and must observe the planning limits on shared houses that the council has introduced. Four Oaks and the edges of Solihull have the larger detached homes, and new estates are rising at Longbridge and around the edge of the city. Whatever the property, the sequence is the same: searches, enquiries, the mortgage lender's conditions, exchange, completion and registration.
Commercial property is a Birmingham speciality in its own right. Offices on Colmore Row, shops in the Bullring and on the high streets of Erdington and Kings Heath, industrial units in Tyseley and Witton and the development sites around Curzon Street and Smithfield all need leases negotiated, planning conditions handled and disputes between landlord and tenant resolved. Neighbour disputes over boundaries, parking and extensions are a steady source of work in the terraced streets.
Conveyancing is normally quoted as a fixed fee. Ask for the solicitor's fee, searches, Land Registry charges and stamp duty to be listed separately, and whether leasehold adds to the price; in Birmingham it often does.
Property solicitors for Birmingham are listed below with verified firms first. Our guides cover conveyancing, the fees for buying and selling a house, commercial property law, neighbour disputes and property solicitors generally.
