When to instruct solicitors

Help1234

Hi we are FTB that have had an offer accepted on a house. The vendor has also had an offer accepted on a vacant house. We have a mortgage AIP and have submitted for a full mortgage application. We are waiting for the banks decision. They did a free basic valuation last Thursday and we are also waiting for the results of that.

When should we instruct the solicitors and sign their forms so that they can begin their searches etc? We don’t want to lose money so ideally we would like to wait and hear the results of the valuation and whether we can definitely get a mortgage, however we have received a few emails from the solicitors we have lined up ready I guess wanting us to sign their forms.

Jaglad111

Instructing before mortgage offer is a risk. If you get knocked back or the valuation falls short you may of incurred unnecessary expense.

On the flip side it can help speed up the process. We chose to wait. Luckily our broker was on hand to deal with the nagging EA's as they will try to push you toward getting things rolling ASAP.

Best of luck.

G_M

Unleess you wish to deliberately slow down the whole process, you should have already instructed your solicitor.

If I were your seller, and my solicitor was getting nothing from yours or did not even know who your solicitor was, I would be re-marketing.

fromtheshires

G_M wrote: »

Unleess you wish to deliberately slow down the whole process, you should have already instructed your solicitor.

If I were your seller, and my solicitor was getting nothing from yours or did not even know who your solicitor was, I would be re-marketing.

This.

Its OK to not have one before you put in an offer, but as soon as an offer is accepted, you should really be contacting a solicitor / conveyancer to move the process along and get things rolling. Yes, you may end up paying some fees if the sale / mortgage offer falls through however not appointing one right away slows things down considerably.

If you are in a small town and there is only one solicitor, as they cannot act for both parties, you will then have to go further afield which means that you cant just pop in with forms on your way past.

Surrey_EA

Jaglad111 wrote: »

Instructing before mortgage offer is a risk. If you get knocked back or the valuation falls short you may of incurred unnecessary expense.

On the flip side it can help speed up the process. We chose to wait. Luckily our broker was on hand to deal with the nagging EA's as they will try to push you toward getting things rolling ASAP.

Best of luck.

As others have now pointed out, not instructing a solicitor once your offer has been accepted, and the chain is complete, runs the risk of the seller not being convinced that you are a serious buyer, or you have genuine reason to believe you will not be approved for a mortgage.

Waiting until a mortgage offer has been issued before instructing a solicitor is likely to significantly delay the process.

ACG

Let the solicitors know you plan on using them but not to do any work or instruct any searches until the Mortgage offer is issued.

Surrey_EA

ACG wrote: »

Let the solicitors know you plan on using them but not to do any work or instruct any searches until the Mortgage offer is issued.

If you do this, then I think it is fair to inform the vendor of the property you wish to buy of your intentions, as it indicates a buyer has doubts about receiving a mortgage offer. Therefore a seller may well wish to limit their expenses whilst the buyer waits for an offer of funding to come through.

It will make the process longer than it might otherwise have been.

saajan_12

Both ways carry risk.

IF you run searches and mortgage application concurrently, you risk paying both fees if one raises issues.

If you wait then you risk the seller getting impatient as there is no solicitor activity yet which already means a slower timeline plus the potential clue that you're not motivated / confident about the mortgage. They may pull out meaning you waste the mortgage / application fee as well as your time / additional rent.

Unless you have a particular worry that the lender will reject, the standard process is to get both mortgage and solicitors sides started asap.

Lauralou79

I enquired and agreed to use a solicitor once our offer was accepted,however they weren't formally instructed until the mortgage was offered. We were able to use their details for sales memo/mortgage. We had to wait for valuation so this took a couple of weeks longer than the few days.
It is risky instructing before the mortgage is confirmed but knowing now how long our solicitors took I'd be tempted as it really slowed down a pretty straight forward purchase!

ACG

Surrey_EA wrote: »

If you do this, then I think it is fair to inform the vendor of the property you wish to buy of your intentions, as it indicates a buyer has doubts about receiving a mortgage offer. Therefore a seller may well wish to limit their expenses whilst the buyer waits for an offer of funding to come through.

It will make the process longer than it might otherwise have been.

Not at all. I do this with every client and 99% of my cases go to offer (I have had 4 cases I have been unable to place after an application has been made in 5 years - the last thing I want is to sit keying an application for it to not proceed).

There could be an issue with the case.
There could be an issue with the property.
It is not delaying anything at all, it is the normal process. Why would you spend money on the second part of the application process before the first part has been signed off?

ACG

saajan_12 wrote: »

If you wait then you risk the seller getting impatient as there is no solicitor activity yet which already means a slower timeline plus the potential clue that you're not motivated / confident about the mortgage. They may pull out meaning you waste the mortgage / application fee as well as your time / additional rent.

What about them seeing a valuation has been instructed/carried out?
The vendor can see movement even if solicitors are not instructed.

Dont get worried about estate agents sales spiel, they are generally only interested in getting their commission sooner rather than later and apply undue pressure a lot of the time.