Bernadette is an Associate in the Residential Property team.

Bernadette is a Chartered Fellow Legal Executive with CILEX with 30 years conveyancing experience. She supports people looking to buy, sell, gift or remortgage residential freehold or leasehold property. Her work includes dealing with buy-to-lets, properties held in trust and property which stands to be inherited following death. Her specialism lies in claims for adverse possession, defective title (ownership) of property and restrictive covenants affecting the use of land.

Her experience includes acting for first-time buyers trying to get a foot on the property ladder, existing home owners wanting to downsize or move to a larger property, private and commercial landlords dealing with residential investments and executors and trustees responsible for the administration of trusts and estates.

Examples of how Bernadette has supported clients include:

  • enhancing the value of a plot of land by obtaining indemnity insurance to get around a restriction limiting its development, enabling the plot to be sold with planning permission for the erection of multiple homes;
  • securing a lower rate of stamp duty land tax for a property purchased with the benefit of a granny annex by making a claim for multiple dwellings relief;
  • successfully completing the complex purchase of an old mill situated alongside a river which was sold with the benefit of fishing and mooring rights and which also came with the obligation to maintain the river bank; and
  • persuading the seller of a leasehold property to rectify, at their expense, a provision in the lease which prevented our client from registering their ownership of the property at the Land Registry.