No wonder conveyancing is so slow

ThePants999

I've had an offer accepted on a property after the sellers' previous sale fell through late in the process. Clearly, therefore, their solicitor has all the contract documentation ready to go. When it hadn't shown up after a couple of days, I asked my solicitor how long they thought it was reasonable for the seller's solicitors to take to send this stuff through. "7 days", they said.

7 days? To grab some documents you've already prepared and stick them in an email? Corh, these people live in a different world. If someone at work asked me for some documents that were already in my possession, taking more than an hour to get back to them would be pretty poor form.

I can see this is going to be a frustrating process for me... Anyone have any good tips for speeding it up / avoiding delays? Mortgage and survey are in hand, it's all about the solicitors really.

marksoton

Have you had a formal mortgage offer? Has the survey/valuation taken place?

Thrugelmir

If you haven't even got a mortgage offer then I doubt your vendor has asked their solicitor to do anything yet. Time costs money. No point in wasting money until matters are ready to proceed.

agrinnall

As it's such a doddle perhaps you should give up your job and become a hotshot conveyancing solicitor who will corner the market in England, becoming a multi millionaire in the process. Or you might find that it's not quite as simple as you think.

G_M

ThePants999 wrote: »

I can see this is going to be a frustrating process for me... Anyone have any good tips for speeding it up / avoiding delays? Mortgage and survey are in hand, it's all about the solicitors really.

* if you'd ended the question earlier ie "Anyone have any good tips?" I'd have said: Learn patience or this will drive you mad. Buying a property is always slower than you want, always slower than you expect, and unless you chill, it will drive your blood pressure through the roof

* You say: "Mortgage and survey are in hand." What does that mean? Done? If not, there's no hurry and no point stressing.

* No - it's not "all about the solicitors really." That is just one area. There are many others that can, and will, slow things down.

questionss

It may even have still been with the previous buyers, or their solicitor. It took a few weeks for ours to reach our solicitor in a similar situation.

AdrianC

Seven days for the standard draft contract to be revised with the details of the new sale and sent through to your solicitor is neither here nor there on the timescale. This is nowhere near the critical path.

Before you're ready to sign that draft contract, you need to have your mortgage nailed down, you need to have read the survey report and agreed any issues arising from it with the vendor, and your solicitor needs to have sorted any issues arising from the returned searches.

If and when all that lot's done, THEN you can worry about how long the draft contract will take to reach him.

kingstreet

Perhaps the vendor's solicitor was waiting for the previous contract to be returned before issuing a new one? That is normal procedure in the circumstances.

Email a draft contract? Can't be done. You need to be aware that the legal process requires certain documents to be exchanged in paper form.

You can kick and scream to get everything done double quick, but if one party in the chain doesn't want to complete until 1 April (for example because their early redemption penalty doesn't expire until 31 March) you aren't going to complete until then, at the earliest.

Why do people think they are going to exchange and complete the minute the last piece of paper is back? We are dealing with human beings who are governed by kids, holidays, money and a myriad other issues which determine why they can only move on X date.

davidmcn

kingstreet wrote: »

Email a draft contract? Can't be done.

Why not? The final version may need to be a signed hard copy but other types of draft contract are routinely adjusted electronically these days.

marksoton

davidmcn wrote: »

Why not? The final version may need to be a signed hard copy but other types of draft contract are routinely adjusted electronically these days.

I'd suspect the key word here is adjusted, not finalised.

Besides which the OP seems far from even at that stage.

benjus

Don't see why the draft contract can't be emailed. In fact, there's no reason that a solicitor can't email the final contract to one or more of the parties for them to print out, sign and return the hard copy. This is commonly done when some parties are outside the UK.

I suspect the main reason solicitors like to stick to hard copy is that it's harder for the recipient to accidentally miss (or intentionally ignore) anything, and of course the solicitor wants all parties in the transaction to be fully informed as to what they are about to sign.