How to get solicitors to get a move on......?

Oh Luckygirl, the hold ups are so tiresome and time consuming. Of course, it is urgent, there could be another lockdown on the way and the stamp duty holiday won't last forever. We were finding information for our solicitor quicker than the other solicitors were sending it across.
They have furloughed a lot of the junior staff who do a lot of the running around searches and are either too busy or too high and mighty to do it themselves!
Hold your nerve, Luckygirl, fingers crossed it will happen.

midgey

Oh Luckygirl you must be spitting feathers. I’m so sorry you are having yet another nightmare.

Same here Luckygirl for you!
It's no consolation I know, but at least you can say you've done your best.

Oh Luckygirl you must be spitting feathers. I’m so sorry you are having yet another nightmare.

Solicitor now back from holiday.

I contacted her - she says she does understand the urgency.

However, I asked asked her if the error over my road had been sorted (buyers' searches say that I am on an unadopted road - it is a on a bus route for goodness sake!) - I provided them with the correct information weeks ago. All she could say was that the buyers' would rely on the information given by the council. End of. I pointed out that this was wrong information and I wished her to do something about it as it might deter the buyers. Eventually she said she would contact the buyers' solicitor. How much of her job do I have to do for her??!!!! What else is she not doing that I know nothing about??!!

I am resigned to the idea that the move may not happen for for many months or at all, if further lockdown happens.

I am beyond angry. My son-IL says he thinks they take on too many cases and just cannot keep up. who knows?

We lost our buyer last week. I managed to get thru to my solicitors office yday to ask about completion before 31 March as I'd heard rumour it was taking ages. They confirmed a short chain ie empty property up to two buyers in chain was taking around 16 weeks. More in chain they are telling everyone they need over 20 weeks to avoid stamp duty.

Our conveyancing solicitor is excellent, really on the ball with everything. However, the solicitor who recently dealt with probate for my Dad's estate was terrible, it took months, I chased no chased to get it done. When my uncle passed away, I i hi probate myself, easy and straightforward. No delay. Glad we didn't use a solicitor, would still be waiting!

I can empathise Luckygirl, my solicitor did the exact same thing to me; went off on holiday and said nothing to me and didn't arrange for anyone else to pick it up in her absence. I also sent the same documents and accompanying certificates on multiple occasions. It's worrying and frustrating, in equal measure.

Well - just emailed solicitor and it seems she is on holiday till 21st! She made no mention of this. So I have been in contact with a "paralegal" who is supposed to be picking things up; and she has sent me a copy of a letter from the buyers with a list of questions she wants me to answer that I have already answered (and sent supporting documents) weeks ago - presumably they did not forward these. I am beginning to give up here.

If tighter lockdown returns because of the increase in new virus cases the move could get scuppered if we do not get on with it. I am so cross. Grrrr.

When we moved we had to keep phoning weekly and pushing, some solicitors are extremely slow.... Keep asking for updates, asking whether items are resolved, how much more is there to do etc...

You might as well do your own conveyancing for a new build - as a lot of solicitors seem to delay for no valid reason.

We were happy with our local (South East Cornwall) solicitor when we moved two years ago, until it came to getting our money from him (the balance from selling and buying). We waited a couple of weeks, then contacted his office and had to ask twice before the money went into our account. ("Oh, sorry, Mr S must have had a senior moment."). Once the police started looking for him and he was all over the local paper we heard horror stories from lots of local people who had had more trouble than us getting their money. It was his own long established family firm.
Not all solicitors are honest.

Is there a senior partner in the firm that she works for? If so , contact him/her and complain about your solicitor. Start giving her deadlines. "I will phone you on Friday/ this time next week". Keep detailed notes with dates and times of every phone conversation you have with her and all the emails or letters you get from her.
Most of us are hardwired to be nice, polite and friendly. Now maybe the time to stop being amenable.
But, yes, you must definitely get the searches done!

When I bought my last house the solicitor was a nightmare to deal with - they only seemed to process anything if I rang them up and it dragged on for weeks. I didn't get to speak to the solicitor doing the work, only her secretary, and the final straw was being told they hadn't received a reply from the seller in regard to a list of questions they had sent - have you contacted them again? I asked. No, was the response - but we will send a letter out in the next few days. They had a phone number for contacting them! So frustrating.

We're moving house at the moment and I discovered that it had taken our solicitors over five weeks to apply for the searches. Most of them came in quickly but the local authority search took seven weeks. Really irritating.
We decided to go ahead with the completion of the sale as our buyer needed to complete before the end of last month and have so far been effectively homeless for almost two weeks - though we are very lucky because we have somewhere to stay.
We once bought a property in a development of 30 flats in an old building. The developer's estate agent organised cut-price conveyancing with a shared search from a local solicitor. It was cheap and fast - I don't know why this isn't done more often.

I’m still in the last house I bought, 22 years ago. And the solicitor I used was fabulous. Kept me totally informed all the time especially as the vendor kept sending wrong information, not replying, posting letters instead of replying to his solicitor. When or if I move again I hope the guy I used is still there! He even rang me on a Thursday to say he had just exchanged and completion would be the next day. Just as well as the removal men were coming on the Friday and if this hadn’t happened I don’t know where I’d have gone. But my daughter recently had a solicitor whose two speeds were dead slow and stop. I was very lucky

When I moved, my Solicitor gave me a price for conveyancing and that was what I paid . Was not charged extra for either his or my phone calls or letters.

You do usually need searches as a condition of a mortgage but if not you can buy search indemnity insurance.m, which is often cheaper than the cost of the actual searches. Check the terms of your engagement letter when your solicitor confirmed the fee and your instructions, it should give you the name of a senior person responsible for complaints handling. Many solicitors have been swamped by influx of new work since the stamp duty holiday started. I have just completed on a chain free purchase that took 5 months from offer, due to lockdown issues and survey issues, and a few errors being made as lender, surveyor, and lawyers all had too many staff furloughed to deal with it quickly.

We tend to assume that solicitors are very professional and reliable, and duly put our faith in them. Four years ago, when we decided to sell our house and purchase a new build fifty miles away, we used our local, small town solicitor. The business had been recently bought due to previous owner's retirement. We discovered that the receptionist was the owner's eighty three year old MiL, and his son, who I took to be about sixteen, was in charge of presenting the properties ie photographs, schedules, appointments etc. To be fair to the son, he hadn't actually just left school, as he told me that he'd been a fisherman for a while. The sale proceeded, and we moved to a rental property near our soon to be new home. We moved out on the Friday, and the trainee who was handling the procedure called later on Friday ( we were now fifty miles away ) to say that she had forgotten to get a signature for a particular document, after I had expressed surprise earlier that we hadn't had to sign anything! The money was being transferred on the Monday, so she said that seeing as she lived near us anyway, she would come to us for the signature on Saturday. She never turned up then, or on her way back to the workplace on Monday morning. She had no sooner arrived at work when it was discovered that there was no signature, so her boss immediately made her do the 100 mile round trip back to us. She admitted that she had forgotten all about it by Saturday morning. We quickly found another solicitor!

When I sold my last house, the buyer wanted to complete within 6 weeks. He paid his solicitors extra to get this done and they complied. Just goes to show they can do it if they want to

My daughter was selling her house. Her solicitor kept blaming the buyer’s solicitor for the delays. The buyer was a good friend of my other daughter. She told us that her solicitor was also blaming the other. A casual word in both their ears to the effect of ‘do you know that the buyer and seller know each other well?” and things magically speeded up on both sides.

I used to work for solicitors. You have to keep on at them or your file ends up at the bottom of the pile. The telephone is probably more effective than email.

The longer they take the steeper their bill. It annoys me that they charge if you phone them or you write them a letter.

I also have someone buying where I am currently living so solicitor is dealing with two lots. I do not want to hear that you moved in 13 days!!!!!!

We bought a new build. From paying the deposit to moving in was 13 days. We used the developer’s recommended solicitor who had done the legal work for many of the other purchasers. We had a next door neighbour who had been in her house for a year with no problems so weren’t worried about any conflicts of interest. Developer paid £500 of our legal fees which was a bonus.

#Luckygirl we were very fortunate to have an excellent solicitor but our buyers solicitor ignored all their emails and phone calls. So our solicitor started to contact them and that soon got them moving. All done and dusted in a few weeks!