Olivia Hargreaves

Olivia is a senior member of our conveyancing team and an experienced solicitor who has been working in residential property for nearly a decade.

She deals with the sale and purchase of freehold and leasehold homes, with shared ownership and right-to-buy arrangements, with remortgages and equity releases, and with property disposals arising from separation, divorce and death.

She has particular expertise in dealing with transactions that involve multiple people who are in a long or complex property chain, and in supporting private buyers and small-scale developers in acquiring property at auction, including ‘ready to go’ buy-to-lets and holiday accommodation, and single or job-lot ‘doer-uppers.’

Olivia’s clients are predominantly based in Cheshire and Staffordshire, although she does act for sellers and buyers who live further afield in the Midlands, the North of England and overseas.

Feedback from clients praise Olivia for her patience and understanding, her willingness to talk through concerns (particularly with first-time buyers), her ability to overcome problems as and when they arise and her determination to get deals done, on time and within budget.

Recent examples of Olivia’s work include:

• completing the purchase of five auction properties within 14 days of the hammer falling on our client’s successful bid, despite a serious error being spotted in the paperwork which meant that the name of the seller and the company registered as the lawful owner of the properties did not match;
  
  
• supporting the buyers of a property which was severely damaged in a fire between contracts for the purchase being exchanged and the transaction being completed, which included helping them to rearrange their finances when their mortgage company refused to release any funds until essential repairs had been carried out;
  
  
• negotiating a delay to the agreed completion date of a house sale when, a few days before contracts were due to be exchanged, the owner of the property unexpectedly died and their family needed to wait for probate to be granted before the sale could proceed; and
  
  
• managing a complex chain of sales and purchases which involved first-time buyers, two sets of divorcing couples and a seasoned house buyer, all of whom had differing requirements but who needed to be supported to work together to get the various transactions completed on the same date.