House Sale - How Long Before I Get Money From Solicitor

fed_up_and_stressed

AdrianC wrote: »

Next working day.

Absolutely ..which wasn't a problem for us.

TBagpuss

GDB2222 wrote: »

I wasn't aware that solicitors send cheques for house completion any longer. Amazing! But, if that is the case, the OP's solicitors will indeed have to wait for clearance before remitting the funds.

In addition, they may have to send funds to pay off the mortgage, and they will want to deduct their fee. That all takes time to do, but I'd expect them to pay the OP within around 24 hours of getting cleared funds.

It does sound like the OP is getting a fairly basic service from her solicitor, which is fine if she is paying a fairly basic price.

Cheques for completion really surprises me - cheques sendign money from solicitor to client is less uncommon, but in my experience you can always request thatpaymwnt is sent another way.

The solicitors can't guarantee funds on the day of completion - CHAPS payments are only guaranteed as same day if they are sent before 3 p.m. (I think) and as the solicitors can't control when the money is sent to them, they can't gauarantee to send it out before that deadline.

However, if you are willing to pay for a CHAPS payment both to your solicitors and then on to you, then you should be able to get the money cleared into your account the working day after completion at the latest.

if you don't want to pay then you can ask them to send the payment to you via BACS. Be aware however that if they ask the buyers to send the money to them via BACS then they would normally still wait for it to clear before sending it out. the fastest option is for both trnasfers to be done via CHAPS, but there will be a charge each time.

They shouldn;t need extra time to deal with the payment of the mortgage and sortingtheir fee as those things are generally known in advance so the completion statement can be drawn up ahead of time, and the money sent out as soon as completion takes place.

dc197

TBagpuss wrote: »

ask the buyers to send the money to them via BACS

Alternatively, ask them to use Faster Payments, if the amount is below 250K and below the amount limited by each bank in the transaction (so says http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about-us/how-faster-payments-works).
It won't cost anything, you'll get it within two hours (so says http://www.payyourway.org.uk/new-technology/faster-payments/) and often within seconds (so says my personal experience).

agrinnall

TBagpuss wrote: »

if you don't want to pay then you can ask them to send the payment to you via BACS.

While some solicitors may have the ability to use the only part of BACS still in operation, the Direct Credit system, I would be surprised if any would use it for this purpose - it's generally used for things like salary payment.

dc197 wrote: »

Alternatively, ask them to use Faster Payments, if the amount is below 250K and below the amount limited by each bank in the transaction (so says http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about-us/how-faster-payments-works).
It won't cost anything, you'll get it within two hours (so says http://www.payyourway.org.uk/new-technology/faster-payments/) and often within seconds (so says my personal experience).

I don't believe any bank has a FPS limit higher than £100K, so your mention of £250K is irrelevant - there may be a few banks that would allow multiple transactions exceeding £100K in total over 1 day but I'd doubt then if there is a £250K upper limit.

And if you're going to promote FPS (which I have no issue with) I suggest you educate yourself about how it really works - yes, a payment will often arrive within seconds, and if the receiving bank acknowledges the message from the sending bank it will usually apply the payment within 2 hours, but the only certainty is that the payment will be complete by the end of the next banking day. Which is why CHAPS is the recommended method for transfers that are time critical.

dc197

agrinnall wrote: »

I don't believe any bank has a FPS limit higher than £100K, so your mention of £250K is irrelevant - there may be a few banks that would allow multiple transactions exceeding £100K in total over 1 day but I'd doubt then if there is a £250K upper limit.

And if you're going to promote FPS (which I have no issue with) I suggest you educate yourself about how it really works - yes, a payment will often arrive within seconds, and if the receiving bank acknowledges the message from the sending bank it will usually apply the payment within 2 hours, but the only certainty is that the payment will be complete by the end of the next banking day. Which is why CHAPS is the recommended method for transfers that are time critical.

I don't appreciate being told to educate myself when the points I have made are quotes from the FPS website, which I cited as well. If you follow the link you will see about the 250K limit as well as the banks' own limits. .

pathtofreedom

dc197 wrote: »

I don't appreciate being told to educate myself when the points I have made are quotes from the FPS website, which I cited as well. If you follow the link you will see about the 250K limit as well as the banks' own limits. .

Not to derail the thread at all, but it can also depend on the banks involved and their fraud checks. I sent my deposit to my solicitors account this week using faster payment. 22 hours later it still hadn't come through, a call to my bank gave me a different reference number, so that they could check with their bank as to why the payment had got stuck, and to get it released into their account properly.

agrinnall

dc197 wrote: »

I don't appreciate being told to educate myself when the points I have made are quotes from the FPS website, which I cited as well. If you follow the link you will see about the 250K limit as well as the banks' own limits. .

You are right about the £250K limit, so I apologise for that, although I still have my doubts whether most banks will actually allow that much to be transferred.

My "educate yourself" comment referred to your second paragraph only. I can see from the link you posted that they believe "all" Faster Payments are processed end-to-end within 2 hours, but I think that is an incorrect statement, and I note that the link to more information they provide does not work. There is plenty of evidence from threads on here that not all payments are fully processed within 2 hours.

They seem to be confused as their next bullet point refers to the correct position which is the D+1 timescale. It's slightly concerning that a website supposedly run by a body representing the UK payments industry should propagate misinformation like this, as people who don't know how it actually works will have expectations that may not be met.

Rodders53

agrinnall wrote: »

While some solicitors may have the ability to use the only part of BACS still in operation, the Direct Credit system, I would be surprised if any would use it for this purpose - it's generally used for things like salary payment.

Our Solicitors used BACS to transfer the cash from a Probate sale last December. Their CHAPS charge - although lower than many people quote here - was such that any loss of interest was irrelevant for the 2-3 working days it took. (Although the sum of money was not trivial!)

mystic_bertie

Thanks to everyone who has replied, i read every post but im sorry i cant reply to every post as there is so many.

I spoke with my solicicitor today. When they reply to the other solicitors they are asking they pay by chaps. Now they still cant guarentee or make any assurances of when i will get my money. She said the money might come in on the friday at 5pm, it has to go through there processes, logged in and mortgage paid and fees deducted. So they cant even say if i will get my money next working day. Its like getting blood out of a stone. I get the impression they like people money in their bank for a few days and so wont make any promises. Even if i pay their stupidly high £55 CHAPS fee there is still no guarentee i will get my money next working day.

Yes i did go for a cheap conveyancing company, i have paid high fees in the past and got a bad service so now on i will pay the low fees.