HSBC chamgig conveyancing rules

AlexSnow

timmyt wrote: »

conveyancers will not charge more to deal with an HSBC mortgage. It isnt that much extra work in fact, just get yourself ordered with a standard letter of reply, and just follow the 6 page letter. It is a badly prepared letter as you might expect.

I'm afraid I disagree TimmyT, whether it is lots or a little of extra work is irrelevant, conveyancing fees have been squeezed so much by these factory conveyancers that people will charge an extra fee for having to correspond with another party and comply with their 6 page letter.

I've just watched most of a tree being passed through our photocopier and being posted to HSBC's lawyer by one of my conveyancing staff! Not charging extra would be commercial suicide if this took off!, the extra cost of printing, paper, postage and the time involved all adds up! There is nothing (in my opinion) that we are not having to do other than receive the mortgage monies in...

We should also remember, whether or not the conveyancer charges extra, HSBC's conveyancer is charging their fee so the consumer is paying more unnecessarily.

irishcol

For what it's worth, I got a letter from HSBC earlier in the week confirming that I would not have to pay the £192, as I started the process of applying for the mortgage in early January - before they announced they were itnroducing the fee. I did have to phone them up to ask for it to be deducted, but at least they agreed.

The process of having a 3rd solicitor is definitely slowing the process down - it would be okay if all that was involved was sending them copies of everything my solicitor receives, but they also seem slow to respond and don't appear to have read what they get send, at least judging by the questions they then ask.

phil_b_2

I'm currently buying a house with a HSBC mortgage using a member from their panel for conveyancing. I took this option to save the bit of extra cash.

I'm in the latter stages of the process and cant fault the whole service. Both HSBC and the solicitor handed to me have been very prompt with all dealings so far. Everything has come through when it should, if not ahead of shedule. From my own experience I cant see where the negative comments come from but I only have my own experience to go on of course.

Richard_Webster

Obviously if you only have the one solicitor doing it all then it is less likely to be stressful and that is what HSBC want - use their solicitor and it will, they say, all be easy.

That's fine as long you do have a good experience and feel that things have been explained properly to you.

Can we ask:

a) which firm is it that you are using?
b) how local to you are they?

phil_b_2

timmyt wrote: »

1. you don't have a legally qualified person doing your work, that is the scariest part. Certainly not Richard Webster who is a solicitor, solicitors are a rare breed in conveyancing, snapped up by the savvy hunter for quality legal advice.
2. god knows what issues you might have on a re-sale or once you move in
3. panel lawyers are on such low net fees - they get much less than they charge you, so as a result, they do not offer close tothe service my Team do, for the same or less price.

I cant really tell if you have a vendetta against HSBC or something here . You obviously don't like them for whatever reason, perhaps a bad experience?

Anyway, in response to your points:

1) Do you know for sure they arent legally qualified? Besides, if they get the job done then I'm not particularly fussed. The transaction is a simple one so I dont need vast experience on my side I'd assume.

2) What could these be? What could go wrong in X amount of years when I want to sell which wouldnt if any other solicitor did the paper work? All searches and checks etc have been looked at and I've had them to review. The report/survey was the usual guff. Not really sure what could come back to bite me here, other than the various potential home-ownership disaster stuff which is possible regardless of who does your conveyancing.

3) As I said previously, the service has been spot-on. Prompt and efficient. Better than my first home purchase when I chose my solicitor.

Richard_Webster wrote:

a) which firm is it that you are using?
b) how local to you are they?

a) I was given Schulmans - http://www.shulmans.co.uk
b) About 10-15 mins away. I've handed signed documents to them in person on occasion. This has perhaps helped a little. I've not had to go in there with any questions yet though.
When you apply for the mortgage you are given a list of solicitors from the HSBC panel and can opt for one closest to you if you want. At least I could when applying anyway.

Pierredelarue

............

auroan

!!!!!! £300 ph. How the heck can a conveyancing solictor warrent that kind of charge ?

AlexSnow

Pierredelarue wrote: »

Timmy/Richard,
£600.00 does seem a little excessive. By the way, this is two hours work and they have reduced their rate from the £347.00 ph they would normally charge.

This does seem a rather high hourly rate (although these vary depending on where in the country you are), but about two hours work could easily be required to meet HSBC's lawyers' requirements.

Richard_Webster

HSBC had never accepted personal searches but when it promulgated its "Part2" of the CML Handbook on 6th January this year it said it would do so, subject to certain conditions.

Now it has just made an amendment to its Part 2 saying it won't. That will confuse some of the "factory" conveyancing outfits it uses!

steevo_h

I'm also a FTB and was very happy with the mortgage I found with HSBC as it was a very good deal. I make a point of doing a bit of research to any company I use and so was forewarned about using Countrywide for the conveyancing. I decided very quickly that £192 was money well spent to use a trusted solicitor instead of !!!!rywide and so went for this option.

What I didn't realise at the time, was that the £192 was to pay Countrywide to act as middle man between my solicitor and HSBC so they could check my solicitors work. Now that HSBC have approved the mortgage, everything has ground to a halt and the whole thing is a nightmare. There's been one small issue that has required my solicitor to provide some extra information. But HSBC won't correspond directly with my solicitor who has to write to countrywide, who in turn communicate with HSBC and then HSBC come back to countrywide, who in turn come back to my solicitor. Even though nothing has techinically gone wrong, week after week is now going by because the process of my solicitor asking a question and getting an answer from HSBC or the other way round takes 1-2 weeks, even for a simple query. I am now going to miss the stamp duty deadline because of all this (also Countrywide need at least 11 working days between exchange and completion).

I was prepared to use HSBC and pay the extra fee to use my own solicitor because the mortgage is a very good deal. If I had known that Countrywide would be involved in the process anyway, and that I was going to end up in this situation I would have probably gone for the next best deal and enjoyed a comparatively stress free transaction.

Once the process is finished I will be writing a long letter of complaint to HSBC and although it won't help me, I just hope if enough people complain that they might see that CPL is a company best left to rot.