solictors letter

witchy1066

a bit of advice please
sorry if its not clear, I am not good at explaining but will try....

last Monday , we had offer accepted for house we want to buy
I contacted my broker and she submitted full mortgage app on Wednesday, after to ing and fro ing about what we needed to supply,
opened an account with a solicitor also on Monday as the EA were pushing us ,
I told the solicitors it would be about 4 weeks before the survey ,and offer of mortgage, (this is what I was told)

today I received a letter from the solicitors asking us for a £250 up front fee, this will be taken off total on completion , so no problem, then I read the next page which stated that we had 7 days to go into the office with passports and up front fee so they can start the searches , failure to do so could end up in delays or they will take it that we no longer need their services

my question is what do I do ,
I don't want to incur charges for searches and solicitors fee's until we have had the survey done and a definite mortgage offer , ( as some on hear know we are not straightforward case )

do I have to ring the solicitor , if so what do I say,
my MB did say if I needed anything to give her a ring after the weekend but is this one for her or do I have to sort it myself

I don't mind ringing the solicitors myself but am not sure what to say

any advice would be much appreciated , I am having to sort everything out myself as OH is away with work

Thank you x

kellyt86

I would just ring the solicitors on Monday and say you are happy to come into the office for showing ID and pay fee. But you want to hold off the searches until you have your formal mortgage offer in case the survey brings anything up.

It's a perfectly reasonable request, and sure that will be fine.
In the mean time the solicitor can obtain the draft contracts, and look through those! Shouldn't be more than the £250! I would have thought!

Edited to say: ah just seen your other bit about not being a straightforward case and not wanting to accrue any fees, in that case maybe just ask solicitor to hold off contracts and searches until mortgage offer is looking more likely. I can't see why this would be any problem as the seller prepares the contract, and they would need to do that for any buyer, so if you have to pull out more of there side is done I guess. Without too much expense from your side.

kingstreet

Hand over the search fee deposit and your PoI/PoA and ask the solicitor to open a file and wait instructions without incurring any costs.

If they are unable to do this, find a firm willing to follow your instructions. Plenty will.

chanz4

kingstreet wrote: »

Hand over the search fee deposit and your PoI/PoA and ask the solicitor to open a file and wait instructions without incurring any costs.

If they are unable to do this, find a firm willing to follow your instructions. Plenty will.

Fully agree, in fact my solicitior advises to to wait

witchy1066

Thank you for your helpful posts ,
I have to say I was a bit bemused by the letter from solicitor because after I had spoken to them on the phone, they invited us to go to the office, its only 5 miles away , so we went in and introduced ourselves, the solicitor introduced us to his secretary,
I felt comfortable with them , nothing was mentioned at the time about putting a deposit down or us having to take in identification (passport, utility bill)
I suppose I am worried about costs if this mortgage app falls through
and thought it seemed a bit soon as we only put full application in on Wednesday
ah well what will be will be , thank you "kingstreet" you have really helped me through to this stage

and I would say to anyone with less than straightforward case to get a MB , if we don't get this mortgage it will not be for the want of trying from our MB , she has been a godsend to us

chanz4

the id is for money laundering checks

witchy1066

thanks chanz, I haven't got a problem with the id checks or even paying a deposit but its the speed, I hope they are just wanting to get everything in place for when we are ready,

I will make it clear to them I don't want them to proceed until further instruction