changing conveyancing

ric1982

Hi,

We are initial stage of the house purchase. the offer is accepted and we only received the memo. of sale.

I have assigned a solicitor by recommondation of a friend. However a week into it and I am finding them difficult to get hold on to. No response to email or phone reply.

My question is, is it too late to change the solicitor? Its been a week since the offer is accepted. Thinking from both process and seller's point of view.

Thanks,

Surrey_EA

It's unlikely much has happened yet.

Have you signed the solicitors terms, and paid them any money on account yet for searches.

If you're going to change, now's the time to do it.

G_M

Have you signed and returned their Terms of Business? Have you paid them anything?

If you have formlly instructed them (signed TofB) then they could charge you on their hourly rate for any work they've already done. As SurreyEA says, they've probably doe very little.

Write them a formal letter withdrawing your instruction. I'd email it for speed, with a hard copy in the post tomorrow.

kinger101

I'd be inclined to change to. It won't just be your phone calls and e-mails they'll ignore. It will be those of the vendor's solicitor too.

AlexMac

Agreed; as has often been said by others, I choose my solicitor based on whether they communicate effectively; do they pick up the phone when I first ring two or three local firms for quotes, do they speak plain English, confirm their quote immediately by email; confirm that they will use email where appropriate (e.g. when selling I can turn round standard enquiries in a few hours rather than the week or more it would take to handwrite on snail-mailed paper), and usually, that they have a local office where I can pop in to sign stuff? That way we can shave days or weeks off the process.

Yours don't quite seem to meet that spec?

It works both ways; they tend to respect that I will pull my weight and they reciprocate. For example, once when buying, and before smartphones or EU roaming data, I had a text from my lawyer instructing me to find an internet cafe in a town in central Italy, read her report on title and searches, then confirm I'd understood all this, before she exchanged using the papers I'd signed prior. Otherwise the whole process would have delayed 2 weeks til I returned from my Umbrian holiday

camptownraces

Please answer GM's questions above.

Question for the ric1982:
Is this a firm of solicitors with more than one partner, some legal execs, several PAs, or is it a single solicitor practising on his/her own?

If the latter, expect very little service during the month of August - anyone with school aged children is likely to be on holiday.

Even if it's a bigger firm, progress with sales/purchases slows down to snails pace at this time of the year.