Offer Accepted AT LAST!!!! Conveyancing advice

Phirefly

Its been 6 months in coming but late last night our landlord FINALLY accepted our offer on our house hooray!!!! :j

So we well and truly win the race to be in before Easter as we've lived here two years already!!!

So now the hard work starts, I'm really unsure about the conveyancing, there seems to be very little in price comparison between our local family solicitors and 'value' online national conveyancers. We're in no desparate rush to complete, so really for us, price is going to be the main decider.

Quotes I've had from large online companies (JSL, MHN, Hammonds Direct) claim to be fixed fee, but are coming out at about £200 more overall than our local sols, but then I'm thinking well, maybe our local sols will end up adding things on as they're not fixed fee. As theres no chain, no estate agents, we already occupy the property, its a new-ish build and the vendor's wife is a solicitor and is working closely on their legal bits, I'm thinking that surely conveyancing on this one should be a breeze? Could these facts make any difference whatsoever to our costs?

Has anyone got any experience of these large online firms? Any recommendations?

Thanks!

olly300

If you are getting a mortgage on the property the conveyancing solicitor also will act for the interests of your mortgage lender. Mortgage lenders have the might to sue if they need to, so your conveyancing solicitor will have to follow standard procedures to ensure that they cannot be sued by either you or the mortgage lender.

Online solicitors are really just solicitors based in a different location to where the buyer lives for example a buyer based in London may use a firm in Liverpool because it's cheaper. The solicitor is just online because they have a website which draws more customers to them. The firm doesn't really need an online presence as such as nearly all solicitors have access to email, the telephone and the post service.

The reason to use a local firm is local knowledge so if you are buying in an area with say Radon gas or mine shafts, then the local solicitor will know what to warn you and the mortgage company about when the searches come back, and what to ignore.