Query on lenders solicito

flossiemouse

I'm desperately hoping that a professional can give me some advice please.
We are buying a house and we are up to our solicitor ready to prepare the contracts. All searches etc and other stuff has already been done. This has been a long process already with it taking a good while for the mortgage offer to be made. Our buyer and his buyers have been pushing for a completion date for about a month now. Our solicitor has just received the mortgage offer last week only to be told she can't act for the lender as they only use their own solicitor. She has told me that its going to delay the exchange of contracts now by a considerable time even though she admitted she has never had to deal with a 3rd party solicitor in all the time she has been practising. We have looked up as much information as we can to get a rough idea of how long exactly this would delay it but can't find a specific answer. We know she will have to forward all searches etc and her normal paperwork to them for them to look it over and approve it but as we were going to complete within the next 2/3 weeks maximum then is the very end of June still possible bearing in mind the paperwork she has already done in advance?
We're extremely stressed now as we're conscious our buyers and his buyer wanted a June completion. Our daughter has enrolled at the local college near the new house and if this falls through she'll have to pull out. We didn't even know there were lenders panels etc and lenders that used their own solicitors otherwise we would have got the FA to maybe suggest one. Also can we phone the lenders solicitors and speak to them about the timescale? Its taken us almost 2 years to sell our house and so we obviously don't want this sale to fall through. Our solicitor said she can't do anything at all now until she receives instructions from the lenders solicitor as to what they want from her but when i phoned my FA to ask advice they phoned the lender and they said to carry on doing what she was going to do next and then their solicitor will request other stuff. I'm all confused and worried now. Can someone please advise me? Thank you

bap98189

If the lender's solicitor is quick to deal with the required documents then it could only add 2 or 3 days to the process. If they are slow then it could take longer. If you don't even know who they are then there is no way anyone can answer your question.

I'm surprised that your lender didn't raise this earlier. When we applied for our mortgage one of the first things they asked was who our solicitors were as they wanted to make sure they were on their approved list and could act for them as well as us.

After all this time and expense your buyers are unlikely to pull out at this stage due to a delay of a week or so. Focus on that and make sure your solicitor does things in a timely manner.

eddddy

Your solicitor must have known at the outset that she was not on your mortgage lender's panel. Didn't she tell you?

If not, I would be tempted to ask your solicitor why she didn't tell you - and push some of the responsibility back on your solicitor for getting this resolved quickly.

flossiemouse

HI
We did supply all our solicitors details right at the beginning but neither the FA or the bank said anything about using their own solicitor. It was a complete surprise. I thought that your solicitor always worked for both the buyer and lender.

TBagpuss

This is pretty common. All lenders have their own panels and require that someone on the panel does the element of the work which is required by the lender.

Normally, a solicitor would ask you who your mortgage is with early on, and let know if they are not on that panel (or they will arrange to be added) I'm surprised that your solicitor hasn't come across this situation before.

Whether or not you can complete within the next few weeks will depend on how quickly the new solicitors can get moving and whether they have any additional queries to raise.

The solicitors for the lender are the only ones who can tell you how much time they will need.

Had you told your solicitor, earlier in the process, who you were applying for a mortgage with?

eddddy

flossiemouse wrote: »

I thought that your solicitor always worked for both the buyer and lender.

That's the sensible/easiest way to do it.

To make that work you have to use a solicitor who's on the lender's panel. (i.e. a solicitor that has registered with the lender and passed the lender's 'acceptability test')

Perhaps your solicitor didn't say anything because she assumed she could quickly pass the 'acceptability test' without mentioning it to you, but failed.

flossiemouse

Would the lenders solicitors be likely to answer any of our queries direct from us?

flossiemouse

Our solicitor received our offer last Wednesday and when I rang her on Friday to make sure she had got it she said she couldn't do anything till receiving instructions. I asked if she had contacted them and she said no because there wasn't a telephone number on the letter just the name and address??? What happened to Google I ask??? I got the number straight away. That was 2 days wasted and she didn't even think to pick up the phone on the day she received the offer to discuss it with us.She just said what a lot of extra paperwork it would cause and lots of delayed time. I don't want her passing this onto our buyers solicitor when she's never had to do this process before as she might put them off before she's even spoke to the lenders solicitors.

davidmcn

flossiemouse wrote: »

Would the lenders solicitors be likely to answer any of our queries direct from us?

No, they're not allowed to talk to you. Get your solicitor to find out timescales from them. In my experience it shouldn't add much time to the process - if your solicitor has done their job properly then the lender's solicitor will largely just be reviewing what's already been done rather than asking new awkward questions.

Surprised your solicitor hasn't dealt with this scenario before though - it's not all that uncommon.

flossiemouse

I said that to her that she had done most of the work anyway now we were upto the contract stage but she was still making it out to be a big deal with extra paperwork and time etc!! She said she knew about the separate legal representation but never had to do it.
I didn't think we would be able to talk to them direct which is a shame! Think we're going to just keep pushing her to return everything they want as soon as they request it rather than sitting on it for days now. Can't believe she didn't even contact us and didn't find the solicitors number herself.

Richard_Webster

OP hasn't really answered the question others have asked.

Did OP tell his solicitor the name of the lender when first instructing his solicitor?

When I was practising I would ask for the name of the lender and if it was one that I couldn't act for I would warn the potential client and suggest they went to someone on the lender's panel. The reality was that it was such a lot of aggravation and a bad experience for the client that it was better not to get involved. Sometimes there was no choice or the client specifically wanted me to act notwithstanding this.

If OP's solicitor has never had to deal with separate lender's solicitors then either he/she is pretty inexperienced or works for a large firm that are on nearly every panel and OP is using a really obscure lender.