Advice on really slow buyers solicitors

jparnell

Hello,

We accepted an offer on our house sale on the 17th May. We quickly appointed our solicitors and they sent the contract information to the buyers solicitors on the 31st May.

I email our solicitors every few days for updates on the progress, and whilst our house purchase is just about there, the sale is taking a lot longer as the buyers solicitors still haven't responded to the draft contract.

I asked our estate agent to chase it on Thursday 20th and the solicitors admitted they haven't looked at the information- nearly 3 weeks after it was received. They never respond to emails or calls from our solicitors and its now getting really frustrating as we're not far off being able to exchange on our house purchase.

My wife is expecting a baby on the 12 August and we were really hoping to have moved before baby arrives but at this rate its looking unlikely.

Can anyone offer some advice to get them to hurry things along?

Who was it that said moving is stressful?! :mad:


James

[Deleted User]

Can the agent get the buyer to put more pressure on their solicitor? In the end it's the buyer they work for. It might even be that the buyer is also frustrated by the slow progress, in which case you could suggest they change solicitors.

G_M

Buying/selling property always takes longer than you expect, and longer than you want.

And to answer your question: everyone says "moving is stressful?! :mad:"

Yes,you can hassle your solicitors, or the agent, or the buyer/seller, but to honest the best attitude is to open a bottle of wine, chill out, and just let it run its course......

jparnell

They are apparently keen to move in and are chasing their solicitors but obviously without much success.

Maybe we'll suggest they think about changing solicitors? They have had mortgage approved and surveys have been requested. I guess both of these things could be moved to a different solicitor? Just trying to do my homework before suggesting it.

Thanks

jparnell

G_M wrote: »

Buying/selling property always takes longer than you expect, and longer than you want.

And to answer your question: everyone says "moving is stressful?! :mad:"

Yes,you can hassle your solicitors, or the agent, or the buyer/seller, but to honest the best attitude is to open a bottle of wine, chill out, and just let it run its course......

Thanks, i guess thats the key point, its just taking longer than we want!
So just out of interest, do you think its not completely unheard of for weeks to go by without any progress - in this case not even looking at the draft contract?

G_M

Changing solicitors will definately slow things down.

The buyers solicitors may not have looked at the draft contract because they are waiting for searches to come back from the council(council response time can be a few days or a few weeks).

They will then deal with both together. (I'm guessing here, but thepointis there are other things going on in the background).

jparnell

Ok, understood. I wish they would explain that though if thats the case rather than just ignoring emails and not returning calls. grrrr.