Conveyancing- no move, no fee - Purple Bricks

ellectrastar

Hello,

I have finally decided to market my property with Purple Bricks. This is after I finally found out the reason their agent wasn't returning my emails etc was because she had left the company...

Anyway, as everyone probably knows they offer pay now or pay later options. Pay later means using the conveyancing they recommend. I can beat their quote using a local solicitor that I have used before, but the PB conveyancers say no move, no legal fee and the local solicitors don't. The locals have said I would be charged:

On the purchase:
After receipt of instructions and opening letters - 10%
After receipt and consideration of contract package and submission of searches - 30%
After preparation of additional enquiries, consideration of answers and search results - 40%
After final report prior to exchange - 50%


On the sale:

After receipt of instructions and opening letters - 10%
After preparation and submission of contract package - 30%
After preparation of replies to enquiries and standard additional enquiries - 40%
Immediately prior to exchange - 50%

Both would still charge for any 3rd party fees like searches.

So now I'm thinking which do I do? I was definitely leaning toward the local solicitor as easier to contact, have used before (for purchase only) and assume PB conveyancers are more impersonal with a larger workload, plus I've had a truly awful experience with a long-distance company before which puts me off. However, now I'm weighing up whether it's worth paying extra (just under £200 but could rise to £350 should I require a mortgage on the property I end up purchasing) and gambling on their services, or stick to the locals and risk paying more in fees if it all falls through?

Just wondering what others experiences are...

Rambosmum

Local. You will sell at some point, so go with the local firm you know.

Surrey_EA

Local all the way. But, not surprisingly, I wouldn't be using any of the services offered by PB!

NelliePie

I'm currently in the process of buying a house and the sellers use PB and their conveyancer and they have been nothing less than a nightmare - they took nealry three weeks to send the sellers the initial forms, they were not responding to my solicitors emails, calls or written letters; taking ages to reply to the sellers, not fully answering/responding properly. The seller ended up putting in a complaint. From a buyers point of view it's been a bit if a nightmare and they've held up the whole process. As they were my sellers solicitors I haven't had to deal with them directly but they we'rent impressed. We used one recommended to us by London and country (we got our mortgage through them) and they've been wonderful. so I'd recommend you go local. I'd just like to point out though that this was my one experience with them and others my have had totally different experiences and at the end of the day it's your choice for what suits you best.

K4yl5

Trying to view a property listed with PP is a nightmare, I would not trust any of their services.

davidmcn

ellectrastar wrote: »

The locals have said I would be charged:

On the purchase:
After receipt of instructions and opening letters - 10%
After receipt and consideration of contract package and submission of searches - 30%
After preparation of additional enquiries, consideration of answers and search results - 40%
After final report prior to exchange - 50%

On the sale:

After receipt of instructions and opening letters - 10%
After preparation and submission of contract package - 30%
After preparation of replies to enquiries and standard additional enquiries - 40%
Immediately prior to exchange - 50%

The above sounds odd - are they actually expecting payment from you at each of those stages? Most solicitors would just charge you in one go (immediately prior to completion), rather than a bunch of separate instalments.


ETA (after doing some arithmetic) ah, are those just the abortive fee levels depending on what stage you've reached when it falls through? That makes more sense.

Rambosmum

K4yl5 wrote: »

Trying to view a property listed with PP is a nightmare, I would not trust any of their services.

Really? We've viewed several, never had an issue.

eddddy

From what I can see of this agent's T&Cs, there is very limited benefit to using the 'Pay Later' option. They don't offer "no sale, no fee".

I guess the only real benefit is that you can keep your £849/£1199 in a savings account for up to 10 months - but the downside is that you get tied in to using their conveyancer (or paying an extra £360 fee).


If you like the sound of their "no move, no fee" conveyancer, try getting a quote direct from one of their consumer websites, instead of via PB. (It may be cheaper, as PB won't be getting a referral fee.)

(They seem to have many consumer websites, here's one of them - but this absolutely isn't a recommendation : https://myhomemoveconveyancing.co.uk/ )

ellectrastar

davidmcn wrote: »

ETA (after doing some arithmetic) ah, are those just the abortive fee levels depending on what stage you've reached when it falls through? That makes more sense.

That's correct - guess this is normal.

I checked with my local agent who said if I used their conveyancing there would be no charge from the lawyer if it fell through, only the 3rd party fees. It would just carry on until I had a successful sale/purchase. No-move-no-fee does seem too good to be true though and would suspect a catch somewhere. They already added on about four charges in their small print instead of listing them in the main description.

I'm going to stick with the local solicitor and just keep fingers crossed that we don't have any problems. If we do at least we'll have (touch wood) saved on high street estate agents commission which will compensate...

I've only just instructed PB, not even marketed yet and my anxiety levels are hitting the roof with all the scenarios that I imagine could happen

HB58

We moved into this flat at the end of April. We sold our house using PB and, against my instincts, hubby agreed to use the on-line conveyancers recommended by them.

I can honestly say that things seemed to go OK. There were delays, but these were caused by our vendors not being able to find somewhere they liked, nothing to do with sols or conveyancers.

What I didn't like was that all paperwork could be viwed via the on-line 'portal' but nothing was clearly marked, so we had to wade through every document to find what we needed. Other than that, we had no issues at all.

I am aware that we might just have been very lucky!

G_M

Well to start with, that's clearly no 'no sale no fee' as there is a minum 10% charge from the point of instruction.

Plus you have to pay disbursements on top.

Why not shop around for a local solicitor will to offer genuine 'no sale no fee'? (though they will all charge disbursements.)

Plus on principle I'd never use an EA recommended solicitor, and certainly not one imposed on me as a condition of the EA services.

I assume they have several frms they use? What if the firm they impose is not on your mortgage lender's panel?

I too have viewed properties marketed by PB and sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's attricious. I'm certainly put off as a buyer now when I see PB are involved. Given 2 similar properties I'm interested in, I view the non PB one first every time.