Why is it I taking so long! Sorry bit of a rant!

Estate agents and solicitors all seem to be the same. DD1 is divorcing and selling the matrimonial home, so has both to contend with. The divorce solicitor never does what she has promised and every email or call to prompt her is charged. I suspect it is a ploy to get more money out of us.

It took 3 years for our conveyancing solicitor to register our title at the Land Registry despite repeated phone calls. In the end I asked the receptionist, who would seldom put me through to the solicitor in question ("she's with a client I'll ask her to ring you back" but she never did) for a copy of their complaints procedure. That seemed to do the trick and finally our title was registered.

Might be worth trying that tactic shysal?

Sounds about right to both. Seems like its a money making thing. The charging for every dotted i and crossed T....
Dealing with two stressors is no fun. Sorry to hear of your DD1 double trouble, Shysal.
Thanks for the ears up witht he Land registry problem Gagagran will keep and eye out for that.

You're only calling once a week? You need to be a bigger pain in the backside I'd say.
I'd be inclined to call the boss of the estate agent and tell them you are thinking of pulling out of the deal unless they can get a move on and make this happen. And that you will give them bad reviews all over the Internet as well. If the same agents have had several buyers fall through they are just possibly not doing what one would hope - not properly qualifying the buyers maybe?
Agree what needs to be done today and ask that they call you back when it is done.
Same with the solicitor - they will probably delegate the conveyancing work to someone paid peanuts (a junior, or a clerk - my MIL did such a role on terrible pay). Go to the top and say you are not happy with the speed of progress and you want them to pick up the pace and make things happen.
You do not have to keep either estate agents or solicitors sweet as you will not use either of them again, will you. This stuff is not that complicated and should not be taking weeks. We once got the legal work on a new property completed for us in 5 working days.

Thank you. Jess M. Should have asked here sooner!

The government is in the middle of a consultation to sell off the Land Registry offices and privatise it. Consultation ends next week.
Maybe people in Land Registry are rather concerned about their jobs.

No one's complained about Land Registry staff, durhamjen

I think many of us will have been there. We have moved several times and on each occasion I found that nothing would happen for weeks, I would ring up and lo and behold a step forward was achieved - a momentary triumph, as nothing else would happen until I badgered them again! Sigh.

Nothing changes! In 1975 my husband had to run from one Council Office to another just across the road to get some paperwork sorted and then we had to drive down to Cornwall from London with barely half an hour to spare to exchange contacts! Needless to say this was all stuff that we had been waiting for for weeks while nothing happened!

Ana, can you tell me how you know the problem was with the solicitor and not the Land Registry?
I was just giving a possible reason for the Land registration to be slower than normal?
Do you really have to criticise me all the time?

It's the solicitor's responsibility to register the change of ownership with the Land Registry. If the transfer was straightforward the Land Registry would have no reason to cause a delay - some solicitors are just lazy at getting round to it once the sale's gone through and their fees have been paid.

I was not criticising you, nor do I recall having done so previously.

As for the Land Registry being privatised, I was not aware of that, it is no surprise mind, the successive governments have privatised almost everything else, selling off much like the family silver. Not sure how much longer the NHS has got, despite the protestations to the contrary.
I think we might get a better deal of we could privatise the Government, we could all buy shares and hold them to ransom....

All I want to do is move. If I ever do again....I might ask for an idiots guide to the process. written in words I understand. no small print A list of things expected of me, so I have it all ready and waiting, like retrospective planning which wasnt needed as I did something under permitted development and even after telling them 3 times I didn't need planning, had to produce stuff in a hurry. Luckily I have a friend at the council!

Perhaps I expect too much....hearing my mother agreeing....

I know this doesn't help,Susanne, but you are not alone. I am selling a 2 bed flat and buying a 2 bed Bungalow.
When I started to sell I was told that: Oh dear me, you only have 74 years left on your lease.
I negotiated a good price for the extention and the new ground rent. I was told that this offer is only open for 3 months.
Last Friday I recieved a phone call from the freeholder to inform me that the time on the offer had expired!!!
I phoned my Solicitor, and because I was in bits I didn't understand a word he was saying ( all legal bloody jargon)
All this has happened because of the buyers Solicitors dragging their feet.
I have been asked 3 TIMES if I have had flooding.
......................................................... Japernese knotweed.
The surveyor has noted that I don't have an extractor fan in my kitchen or bathroom.
I could go on and on. But I hope you get the picture.
To give you an idea of how stressed I am, I was trying to screw my electric toothbrush onto the tube of toothpaste!!
I don't think I can take much more.

Oh dear. Puts mine into perspective, hope you get it sorted out. bungalows don't come round at the right price very often....

Oh dear petra - how very frustrating. The worst thing in these situations is that you can see what needs doing but are powerless to get things moving. I do hope it gets resolved soon.

DD is moving house soon (fingers crossed!) and they have been asked so many questions on minute details.

Some years ago I had a Solicitor ( I bought 2 properties through him) who was a proper old school family Solicitor. You genually felt that he was on your side. If you went to him with a problem, he would phone the other Solicitor right away, in front of you and GET IT SORTED.
Very sadly for me and his family he died young. They don't make them like him, anymore. Your nothing to them, only a cash cow.

DD was selling a flat with a rather difficult misleading clause in the leasehold agreement. This clause was drawn to the attention of every potential buyer and when an offer was accepted the Estate Agent sent a letter to the buyer's solicitor drawing his attention to this clause in the agreement.

After a long protracted process the day of exchange was about to dawn when she had a phone call from her solicitor to say. The buyer's solicitor had just read the leasehold agreement and there was this difficult misleading clause......... The sale eventually went ahead, DD nearly had a nervous breakdown.

I thought it was just us. I thought it was OH's continual nagging of the solicitor and Estate Agents which got their backs up. There is nothing worse than moving house and if you add to this the reasons for the move it is amazing anyone survives. The sellers blame the buyers and vice versa until it is eventually discovered that the solicitor has forgotten to send off some vital paperwork.

We need to complain more but by the time it has all gone through we are so traumatised that we just want rid of the whole b****y process.

To everyone suffering at the moment I send and (((hugs))), keep your chins up.

When I started this I was advised by the estate agent to give the lease extention work to my buyers Solicitor as he would have to go through my lease to advise her of anything she needed to know. Good idea, I thought.
He recieved this lease just before Xmas.
Just last week I recieved a letter asking me about my loft.
IT states in the lease that all 5 flats have legal access to the loft. This because if anyone wants to put a TV aireal up there, they can.
Does this mean that he has just started reading the lease ?
He has known since Xmas that there is a time limit on the offer on the lease.
He has had a surveyors report to say that there are NO smoke alarms in the public areas. WRONG.
NO wonder I'm trying to screw the electric toothbrush onto the toothpaste tube. LOL.

My DD has sold her flat to a first time buyer. She is buying a house which is empty and there is no upward chain. So, all should be fairly straight forward and there should be no reason why it cannot be over and done with in about 8 weeks at the most. ( Although why it should take that long I don't know.)
It will be interesting to see how this goes and if anyone is interested I will report back.

Changed my name from a too identifiable one to one I can feel less exposed with should I Need to have a really serious rant ... I think that compared to my OP my situation could be worse!

UPDATE... 2 weeks and counting.

We have just movedd. The conveyancingtook 3 1/2 months, for a simple 3 party transaction. To be fair, our estate agents did give us a weekly update, but the solicitors involved really dragged their heels. Ours actually wrote us a letter, sent in the pist, to ask us to make an appointment to see her! Had she never heard of the telephhone, or email?

I had to nag continually and it was only when we gave a deadline and said we would pull out that things started moving. Never again!!!!

Please you got there in the end Sandra