Victoria Saunders

Victoria is an experienced Solicitor specialising in Residential Conveyancing covering everything from First Time Buyers, Investor clients with property portfolios, shared ownership, higher end sales and purchases and unusual properties. Victoria covers both our Minehead and Williton offices.

Victoria is an experienced solicitor of over 22 years qualification she has dealt with most types of residential transactions. Whilst she is a specialist in Shared Ownership transactions she also enjoys acting for high end sales and purchases of beautiful and quirky properties with land, along with every type of property in between.

Victoria builds great relationships with her clients to the extent that clients tend to refer most of their family members to her and she has been proud to offer an inter-generational service to these family groups throughout her career.

Victoria's pragmatism and calm approach when coupled with a steely determination to get the best result for her client mean that she has a formidable and wide following of clients some of whom have been with her for the 15 years she has spent living and working in the South West.

Victoria talks about her experience:

“My first role in the South West in 2005 was as an Assistant Solicitor at Ashfords, a corporate Top 50 law firm. I had accepted their offer because it scared me the most out of the 6 firms I had received offers from when I had decided to make the move. I quickly rose to an Associate Solicitor and then was appointed to Partner in 2012. The first in a very large and very competitive Residential Conveyancing Team for a decade. I worked in both the Exeter and Taunton offices of Ashfords heading up the Taunton office Residential Conveyancing team and building the team from 5 people to 17 people alongside the work to support that increased team. I left Ashfords in 2015.

I moved to Battens in Yeovil a medium size friendly firm as an alternative to the corporate culture of Ashfords. I again built up the workload and increased the team from 5 people to 13 in the Yeovil office. I was a partner and Yeovil branch team leader. Whilst I enjoyed Battens I was keen to make the next step and was a self employed consultant for a year. This was a mis-step and I realised I needed the buzz of a team working with me.

I then had the very good luck to achieve a goal and become Head of Conveyancing for a small firm in Crewkerne which brings us up to date.

Summary of cases - a couple of high end manor house purchases one particularly rural with private water issues and having to work alongside a specialist surveyor to locate the full extent of the route of the supply and track the rights over a multitude of neighbouring land owners' properties. Successful purchase and all the water rights were successfully agreed and or already in place when we completed.

The sale of a very large listed buildings which had been extensively modernised and assisting the seller with the huge lists of alterations for which various consents had been obtained and trying to assist the buyer's conveyancer to match them all up to their satisfaction and the buyer's surveyor's. As part of this same transaction I also assisted considerably and negotiating the costs of lighting features both for those remaining at the property and those being removed but needing a like for like or very similar replacement. The transaction went through and we had a very satisfied seller client who got to keep some very special chandeliars which had sentimental value.

Complex inter-generational purchase with two separate sales all of which had to exchange and complete at the same time. Successfully achieved. I had to ensure all parties were kept up to date and that each client felt like I was supporting them I had to remain neutral between family squabbles about dates and costs and try not to referee too much.“

Victoria is an enthusiastic art lover, is married to an artist and always manages to fit in time to visit local and national art exhibitions. The Rijksmuseum is on the bucket list. A recent convert to yoga Victoria has invented a new name for one of the moves as the "human pretzel" one day her husband is going to find her stuck in this move! A delight in history and architecture also keeps her busy going to stately homes and reading historical fiction and non-fiction. A vociferous reader all Victoria's family members find book tokens Victoria's most appreciated Christmas or Birthday present.