Lender's solicitor panel

Smedders11

Hi,

We're buying a part-exchange from Harron Homes and they've given us a bloody tight 28-day exchange (which is Friday 24th). We've just been told that our solicitor isn't on the West Brom Building Society's (our lender) approved panel, and suggested we switch solicitors--not really an option considering we've had to already pay for the searches to have a hope of meeting the deadline.

They've said the our solicitor will have to apply to work with them before they'll move forward. Does anyone have an experience or knowledge in how long this usually takes?

Thrugelmir

No guarantee that the solicitors will be accepted onto WB's panel. What has your solicitor said regarding the matter.

davidmcn

The other option would be for the lender to instruct a separate solicitor (who is on their panel) to represent them, but you'll be paying the additional lawyering costs (plus some delay added as things will need to be passed between the two lawyers).

MortgageMamma

Its usually a quick process for a solicitor to get on a lenders panel so don't panic. You could ask your solicitor to phone the lender to arrange to go on panel. The lender will normally just need to have sight of a few documents from your solicitors (PI insurance, etc) and they will put them on. That said I've never dealt with West Brom - if there is problems with exchange date tell them you may not make it and ask for an extension to date;.

amnblog

This is why borrowers should not be appointing solicitors without checking with the broker/lender first.

Smedders11

Broker has said he's going to contact our solicitors regarding the matter today (only found out last night). We're FTBs and our broker mentioned nothing regarding this, so the whole process is new and daunting to us.

The gist from the email I received from the broker suggests that they don't expect there to be a problem with getting the lender approved, but we don't know if it'll be done in time, or incur extra costs.

Hopefully we can extend the exchange date. Dealing with a developer has been horrendously stressful and has made us pay a lot more money upfront. Hopefully I can convince them that it's in their best interest to wait rather than re-market, but I was kinda hoping that we'd have an offer by then and just be waiting on the searches, which we feel would be a stronger negotiating point than not having either completed. Hopefully this doesn't affect that.

Thanks for the help

TrickyDicky101

How did you select your solicitor? Since you have a broker involved, solicitor being on lender panel is something he should have advised in my opinion.

Smedders11

Probably. Lesson learnt, anyway.

As luck would have it some other clients of the solicitor have also used the WB, and they've just recently been accepted onto the lender list!