Arghh!! Moving house and conveyancing frustrations

I'm surprised that a hard copy of the insurance doc was needed, I was responsible for the insurance at the last company I worked at and for years we only had electronic copies of the insurance docs, much easier to just click print on a pdf rather than photocopy all those pages
Glad you have not got knotweed, that would be a horrible thing to have

when i was selling the flat of my dead brother , I paid the management company of the flats to provide the documents directly to the solicitor. That was about 4 years ago and was not that expensive.
Remember that solicitors aim in life it to create stress. I've dealt with them over the years in a professional capacity and most of them are totally incompetent and have no empathy. If you remember that fact, then that reduces the stress by half .

Thanks for the compliment ordinarygirl.

In my experience buying and selling houses/flats has got much more difficult. How is it still the case that both buyers and sellers can pull out at the last minute- without penalty - apart from their own expenses? It used to be the case that the seller could insist on Exchange of Contracts taking place a month (or more) before Completion. This gave the seller some peace of mind because, should the purchaser back out, they would lose their 10% deposit. These days solicitors often bundle the processes together so that Exchange and Completion are very close together; nothing is certain until the last minute.

My daughter and two young children were recently left waiting in their front garden with the van packed, while the solicitors sorted out a last minute blunder with the finances. It could all have fallen apart.
Why is it that Australia and Tasmania have a much simpler process? The prospective buyer has a set number of days to arrange the survey. After that, as long as they are satisfied with the report, they have to pay a non refundable deposit. Then, once again, there are a set number of days until Completion.
Our system is disastrous, and an attempt to improve it some years ago only made it more complicated.

I truly believe there should be a sanction on the many solicitors who charge so much for house conveyancing and cause untold tension and grief in so doing. They sit on documents, do not relay information, go off on holiday at crucial points (without apparently delegating important tasks) and generally behave as if the life-changing material they are handling is something slightly below their exalted noses. After an acrimonious divorce (brilliantly handled, I must say, by his police barrister) my son then needed to go for part-ownership in his next property in order to get something large enough for his family. Everything was hanging by a thread - mortgage offer, agreement with the part-owners etc. - and nothing from his solicitor. The company were on the brink of withdrawing the house from the scheme and after two years of various legal wrangling his mental health was in tatters (and he's a policeman, not given to 'emoting') It all went through on a knife-edge. Life is difficult enough, without this sort of casual cruelty (as I see it). His solicitor had been recommended, but of course there is always staff turnover to be considered. It is not right that individuals have to pay large sums of money to the legal profession and then have to put up with this inefficiency, which, as I say, can be heart-breaking and even life-changing. Solicitors should be accountable - readily accountable, not just via the ombudsman. If I were to behave like that in my profession I would not last long!

How much do you call ‘so much’ and ‘large sums of money’?

There is good and bad in every profession, including solicitors. It's not solicitors' fault that the conveyancing process in England is so cumbersome or that people can pull out up until exchange without penalty.

I was grateful for the professional skill of my solicitor in dealing with my, erm, difficult sellers when I bought this place.

Glad to see my frustrations shared by many others!

Just to update - yes indeed I did download our Management Company accounts from Companies House website, sent to my solicitor who duly passed them on to purchasers solicitor who accepted them with no problem.

Yes I did get the information required about lease extension details from solicitor and was able to pass them on to my solicitor who then passed them back to the solicitor who gave them to me in the first place.

So after 5 months of very sluggish activity, armed with some legal background knowledge - admittedly fairly rudimentary and most likely some of it outdated - a lot of tenacity and a "taking no nonsense" approach - within 3 weeks contracts are exchanged and completion is next Thursday.

Sometimes you just have to ignite a small bomb up the backsides of some others to achieve your goal!

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Reported.