What happens between exchange and completion?

MegaMiniMouse

In the electronic age, it should be simple to set up a page so that, on an agreed date, all solicitors can post confirmation that funds are available and their client is ready and able to complete. Each solicitor would be legally responsible for the accuracy of their post.

At an agreed time (say 3pm?) somebody would hit a button, and all funds would be simultaneously transferred, and all properties would be transferred to their new owners - if a single link is missing from the chain, then all bets are off, and everybody goes back to square one

Job done - house buying should be no more complicated than car buying

MMM

sp1987

MegaMiniMouse wrote: »

In the electronic age, it should be simple to set up a page so that, on an agreed date, all solicitors can post confirmation that funds are available and their client is ready and able to complete. Each solicitor would be legally responsible for the accuracy of their post.

At an agreed time (say 3pm?) somebody would hit a button, and all funds would be simultaneously transferred, and all properties would be transferred to their new owners - if a single link is missing from the chain, then all bets are off, and everybody goes back to square one

Job done - house buying should be no more complicated than car buying

MMM

Lol. Are you an estate agent? Estate agents are usually pretty optimistic about how quickly house sales can go through too.

There would always be somebody who has royally messed up.

Your idea instantly fails if sombody's clock is out by a few minutes, or somebody's internet goes down, or if that bloke from the bank has decided 3pm is an ideal time to go out for a cigarette. Or for the 1000 other reasons that you only find out about after it has all happened.

Solicitors would never agree to be bound by the mistakes of another solicitor which would happen on the undertakings you propose. Your client may have their sale messed up by the last solicitors work but your client is obliged to buy from their seller.

E-conveyancing is a long way off. I would say introducing e-conveyancing and along with it a complete restructure of the conveyancing system open to countless errors would be a nightmare.

Firstly, who pays for all this new computer equipment and software? If you say the solicitors or the banks, who really pays to fund that? The costs of a mortgage and of solicitors fees would be increased and would the public want to pay for such a thing? Nobody in these economic times wants to pay for anything, let alone increasing what we pay for things that we already have.

I absolutely commend your initiative but in reality it just would not work. People are fallible beings and it is often the person you rely on to get it right that monumentally messes up.

sp1987

Plus, regarding car buying. I have never in my life seen a chain of 10 parties all reliant on the sale of another person's car to sell their own car. Where are these people?

Many people sell to a dealer or go without for a week, or have two cars at one time. There are few people that can (excepting bridging finance) afford to have two houses at one time in a similar way to cars. Plus your car does not contain your entire life and all your belongings unless you live very MSE lol. Not many people will say to a friend 'oh I'll let you store everything you own in my house from your own house whilst you peruse for your next model' the way they will offer you a lift to work you do not have your new car yet. You do not have to pay for storage for the contents of your last car before you get your new one.

MegaMiniMouse

Under my new 'non-medieval' system of transferring property ownership, an added bonus would be that the 'ChainPage' would be set up at the very beginning of the procedure, and every solicitor would have an obligation to post up-to-date information about the progress of his/her actions

It would then no longer be possible to fob off annoying questions with the response that their client works on an oil-rig and cannot be contacted

When I left school in 1964, my first job was as a solicitor's clerk, and I regularly had to wade through mountains of ancient and unintelligible deeds in order to check title etc

Registered Land was the latest thing, and was causing all sorts of problems for the aged solicitors at the top of the tree

Houses have become a consumer item, but many of the procedures which still exist are hundreds of years old, and need to go

MMM

MegaMiniMouse

sp1987 wrote: »

Plus, regarding car buying. I have never in my life seen a chain of 10 parties all reliant on the sale of another person's car to sell their own car. Where are these people?

Many people sell to a dealer or go without for a week, or have two cars at one time. There are few people that can (excepting bridging finance) afford to have two houses at one time in a similar way to cars. Plus your car does not contain your entire life and all your belongings unless you live very MSE lol. Not many people will say to a friend 'oh I'll let you store everything you own in my house from your own house whilst you peruse for your next model' the way they will offer you a lift to work you do not have your new car yet. You do not have to pay for storage for the contents of your last car before you get your new one.

I agree with you about the differences between car-buying and house-buying

Maybe we need 'house-dealers', to work alongside 'car-dealers'

MMM

sp1987

MegaMiniMouse wrote: »

Under my new 'non-medieval' system of transferring property ownership, an added bonus would be that the 'ChainPage' would be set up at the very beginning of the procedure, and every solicitor would have an obligation to post up-to-date information about the progress of his/her actions

It would then no longer be possible to fob off annoying questions with the response that their client works on an oil-rig and cannot be contacted

When I left school in 1964, my first job was as a solicitor's clerk, and I regularly had to wade through mountains of ancient and unintelligible deeds in order to check title etc

Registered Land was the latest thing, and was causing all sorts of problems for the aged solicitors at the top of the tree

Houses have become a consumer item, but many of the procedures which still exist are hundreds of years old, and need to go

MMM

I certainly do not agree.

Some of the problems with conveyancing exist because bodies like local authorities will not send their search results very quickly.

Answers like 'my client is on an oil rig' or 'I cannot contact my client' are hardly the solicitor's fault. If a solicitor is given a phone number and an address and they use them to contact clients and leaves messages what more can someone do? If people do not want to answer the phone or answer any questions then that is all a solicitor can use to answer those questions. A solicitor cannot edit what the client says to make them more or less reasonable. If the client says or shows 'I have decided that I want to entirely change tact or become a temporarily missing person' you just have to relay that. You cannot just think of the most reasonable and accurate answer and pretend your client has instructed you to do that. Not everyone is reasonable. Both reasonable and unreasonable people have the right to impartial legal representation. You can really only advise them if they pick up the phone. Sometimes people disappear and do not want to speak or silently decide to themselves that they do not want to sell anymore and decide that they will sit in their house ignoring all calls and mail. That is their prerogative but you cannot blame whoever they instructed to relay their wishes. :rotfl:

MegaMiniMouse

sp1987 wrote: »

Some of the problems with conveyancing exist because bodies like local authorities will not send their search results very quickly

Most search results could be made available online, with instant replies

And trying to get reliable information from solicitors and/or estate agents is worse than a game of chinese whispers - ok, maybe it isn't their fault, but that is another reason to move the property market into the hands of specialist dealers

Buying and selling property is simply not for the faint-hearted or the inexperienced - just read these forums, people have absolutely no clue about what they are getting themselves into

That is why they accept the abysmal quality of service which they receive from the 'professionals' in the field like solicitors and estate agents and from 'the system' in general

MMM

SmlSave

Most search results could be made available online, with instant replies

But not the Local Land search which is the most important one the others generally do come through the same day.

I guess you've had some really bad experiences with solicitors MMM?

But spare a thought for the good ones please who do have to follow the rules made up centuries ago. please? And have to deal with seller's/buyer's who want everything done yesterday but don't return paperwork/telephone calls/money to enable said solicitor to do anything.

MegaMiniMouse

SmlSave wrote: »

But not the Local Land search which is the most important one the others generally do come through the same day

I daresay that when the council employee receives a Local Land Search, then he/she simply consults a computerised database

That database could easily be placed in the public domain, and searches would then be rendered completely redundant

MMM

sonastin

MegaMiniMouse wrote: »

And trying to get reliable information from solicitors and/or estate agents is worse than a game of chinese whispers - ok, maybe it isn't their fault, but that is another reason to move the property market into the hands of specialist dealers

Where do you imagine these "specialist dealers" are going to come from? Strikes me that they will be made up of the ranks of solicitors and estate agents that you are putting out of work. And the problems that arise from the individuals who are poor in their current role will transform into a new set of problems as those individuals find a way to be poor in their new role.