Mortgage advice guideline

Professional Practice Committee guideline on property schedules and promotion of a firm's mortgage advice service

The Journal, July 2006, page 31

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The Professional Practice Committee has issued the following guideline on property schedules and the promotion of a firm’s mortgage advice service:

Rule 5 of the Solicitors (Scotland) Practice Rules 1986, commonly known as the Conflict of Interest Rules, prohibits the same firm from acting for buyer and seller of heritable property at any stage. The Professional Practice Committee has decided that giving advice about a mortgage or finance to a prospective purchaser of a property is acting at a stage. The firm selling the property can therefore only give such advice when the prospective purchaser is an established client or a client otherwise exempt from the general prohibition on acting for buyer and seller in the Rules.

The committee has therefore decided that solicitors should take care about the wording of property particulars. If the firm’s own mortgage advice service is promoted to prospective purchasers in the schedule, the schedule must include a warning advising that the firm may not be able to act for the would-be purchasers in giving mortgage advice or in any other matter connected with the purchase.

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