Arghh!! Moving house and conveyancing frustrations

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activity, armed with some legal background knowledge - admittedly fairly rudimentary and most likely some of it outdated - a lot of tenacity and a "taking no nonsense" approach - within 3 weeks contracts are exchanged and completion is next Thursday.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

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.

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

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!

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.

Thanks for the compliment ordinarygirl.

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 .

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

It gave me a headache just reading the first 8 posts on this thread. I've moved 7 times since 1996, once buying, then selling, a flat in Spain, and although there were lots of problems came up, items in leases, buyers backing out etc, I didn't have to provide all those documents. I've been here now since 2011. Has it got worse since then or was I just lucky with the solicitors?

Unfortunately solicitors who give cheap quotes will use secretaries and the like to gather the information and the solicitor doesn’t see any of it until it’s all been gathered. They then either don’t pay proper attention because they haven’t charged enough to cover much time, or a problem doesn’t get spotted until all the paperwork eventually lands on their desk, when it could have been identified much earlier. Just using a qualified solicitor isn’t the answer. The answer is using one who guarantees to give you their personal attention, and to look at the search results and replies to enquiries as and when they come in, not simply when the secretary/other minion has gathered it all. This will cost more but it’s money well spent. You are buying a service and are entitled to ask exactly how that service will be provided.

ferry28 U really do feel for you. When I moved here in 2019 I promised myself I would NEVER, EVER go through that again.
Used same Solicitor that I had used when I had moved back in 2002. All so easy and speedy back then. One of the problems is that Solicitors mainly used their clerical staff for most of the conveyancing, only picking it up to sign off or if a particular problem presents.
GSM has told us often, that if we want qualified Solicitor to do ALL the work, then we would have to pay considerably more. BUT......clerical staff so often gets things confused and wrong. Moving here, I was told that there was a query regarding the garage which goes with this flat.........Solicitor tried hard to persuade me not to continue with the purchase, because of this and if I wished to do would have to send him a letter saying it was against his advice due to this (?) problem.

In fact there was no problem whatsoever, just clerk had not read all the paperwork carefully enough. I was lucky that one of my children (Legal Executive) visited me layer that day, found me in tears, and took the paperwork and carefully read it, finding the information they had told me was not there. When this was pointed out, no apology was made to me, although there was no further mention of indemnity letter!!!!!

As secretary to the Management Company, I am very aware as to how both sellers and purchasers are feeling, and try not to delay them as far as I can. I reply to ALL solicitors queries within 48 hours.

All the documents that I send to them on the computer are also in our office in hard copy, so if worst comes to worst, they can be photocopied and given to solicitors.

I have written out a detailed 'crib' sheet, regarding information needing to be sent to solicitors when flats are being sold. So that should I be unwell, on holiday or retired from this position, any other cttee member can easily know how to find such information easily.,

Me too crazyH I couldn’t go through either ever again!
It must be a nightmare for you ferry23 good luck to you.

House-moving and Divorce are two of the most stressful events. I should know, having endured both 😂 Have a good Lawyer !

karmalady

I am glad the management company are self-managed ferry23, however,it would have been so much easier if you had volunteered to have taken on some workload at an agm. It always seems to be that only a few people volunteer to take on management duties, whilst the others sit there trying to avoid eye contact

Our accounts, including insurance docs, were easy to provide as I was chair/secretary of our management company

I was a Director of the Management Company for 5 years. I was also a Parish Councillor. I headed up the events team in my town and also fundraised for the hospital League of Friends and the Women's Refuge. I sit on the Board of a local Community Interest Company that benefits the local community and I also support our local branch of The Royal British Legion.

I can't stretch myself any further!

Knotweed is a question on the LE1 form. Once answered in the negative, it should never come up again.

I do find that some of the extra questions that come up (usually a good few weeks after LE1 form and documents are all returned), quite 'imaginative' but not usually very relevant to anything.

One asked us if the Management company had any plans in place for 'unplanned expenditure'.

If you had insisted on a fixed fee they would have been conscious of the need to turn a profit rather than engaging in unnecessary one upmanship. Men are particularly prone to this in my experience.

We made the mistake of using the same solicitors firm as a tenant, (not residential) it was a nightmare, the 2 solicitors were very combative, trying to score points off each other. They were niggling over trivialities trying to charge more time.

In the end I stopped them and told the tenant either accept the lease as it stands or the deals off.

How true.

I am glad the management company are self-managed ferry23, however,it would have been so much easier if you had volunteered to have taken on some workload at an agm. It always seems to be that only a few people volunteer to take on management duties, whilst the others sit there trying to avoid eye contact

Our accounts, including insurance docs, were easy to provide as I was chair/secretary of our management company

Why were you asked this 14 times? How useless was your solicitor?

Ferry23
I was asked 14 times if I had Japanese knotweed. 🤦🏼‍♀️
So much of that awful time is imprinted on my brain. 😡

More questions are asked now - I don’t know how domestic conveyancers deal with the absolute tedium, it would drive me mad - but buying and selling leasehold properties always has always involved asking many more questions than with a freehold property. The secret is to get yourself a good solicitor who will make it as quick and painless as possible. Don’t go for cheap quotes.

I am very sorry for anyone going through conveyancing now which seems to have got so more complicated than it used to be. We used to move house in 6 weeks no problems and the solicitor did it all we just signed this and that. Our last move last year was nothing other than a bloody nightmare of an enormous number of forms to complete which took forever. we could never talk to anyone resulting in us eventually exchanging a few days before completion and completion at 5pm on that day ONLY after DH had rung the conveyancer at the builder's and said something broadly anglo saxon. I'm so sorry I hope your move goes through OK.