Stupid Solicitor

Auzelia

Contacted a local solicitor to make an offer on a house on my behalf, which they did do.
Then today had a phone call saying that she could no longer represent me as she is also the solicitor for the vendor. :rolleyes:

Now how she didnt realise that before I do not know. She must have realised when she put in the offer to the vendor

:rotfl:Just goes to show. With a degree doesnt always come common sense :rotfl:

Doozergirl

She's not that stupid. Solicitors charge as much for buying as they do for selling. Frankly, selling involves a lot less risk than buying so even if she was approached afterwards by your vendor (which is normal to appoint solicitor after accepting an offer) then it will be more cost effective to represent them than you as it will take less time and holds less responsibilty than researching titles etc.

Auzelia

no, the property has been on the market a while and all this time she has been the appointed solicitor for the vendor.

So all in all she was already their solictior when she accepted me asking her to be my solicitor.

ognum

Im not sure why you needed a solicitor to make the offer but your solicitor may have accepted helping you in principle before she realised she had already been retained in respect of this property or it could be that she represents this person on an ongoing basis and did not know of this property specifically. Solicitors after all have many projects ongoing, Im sure they dont keep them all in their head!

Tom25

ognum wrote: »

Im not sure why you needed a solicitor to make the offer !

ognum might be buying in Scotland where offers have to go via a solicitor

sandford6016

Tom25 wrote: »

ognum might be buying in Scotland where offers have to go via a solicitor

And so they should do to. It will stop time wasters putting in offers and wasting sellers times! I hope that the solicitors ensure the person making the offer has/can get a mortgage before making the offer. (Look at my previous posting in this forum and you'll see why I'm so bitter at the mo! Although, we do now have another buyer!)

eco-friendly_2

Must be a small outfit, it can usually be passed to another partner of the same firm AFAIK.


He he, your right though, you can't buy or be taught 'common sense'


She's probably stressed and 'run off her feet' with conveyancing work. :rolleyes:

Auzelia

yes it is in scotland and far as i am aware up here you or not supposed to make an offer on a property unless you have the monies/mortgage to pay for it.

Doozergirl

Auzelia wrote: »

no, the property has been on the market a while and all this time she has been the appointed solicitor for the vendor.

So all in all she was already their solictior when she accepted me asking her to be my solicitor.

Ok. I'll give it to you then. She's stupid!

googler

If this solicitor (in Scotland) is anything like the ones I've encountered, the solicitor won't necessarily know that they're handling the sale of a property until someone puts an offer in on it.

Many have a 'property department' (sometimes just 1 person) handling listings, marketing and promotion. If a vendor hasn't approached 'their' solicitor to market the property for them (who would typcially then pass them on to the 'property department'), then it'll get put on the market, and be on the firm's books, but the solicitors will only concern themselves with what lands on their desks - when an offer is received and has to be negotiated/accepted/declined.

So, in short, it doesn't surprise me that this solicitor realised after accepting instruction from a buyer that they or their firm were already acting for the seller.

I am surprised that the OP here asked the firm selling the property to make an offer on that property....... surely the OP must have realised they were contacting the seller's solicitor? All the firm's branding would have been on the schedules, the web listing etc......

Where did the OP see the property? Is the OP remote from the property, and contacted the local solicitor merely because they were local?

googler

The other possibility is that the property is being marketed by an agency outwith the solicitor firm; and that the solicitor carries out conveyancing work for this agency, and hadn't yet been advised the agency were selling the property under discussion.