Can I make a complaint about vendors solicitor?

RubyDoo

We were at the bottom of the chain and our buyer's solicitor decided to go on a two week holiday right when we were at the point of being ready to exchange. She didn't delegate her work to her colleagues so we had to sit and wait for her to return. There wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. But since then I have ensured anyone and everyone knows not to use them.

MobileSaver

Silian wrote: »

Our sellers agent insisted that we use these solicitors as they are apparently good at working with the seller's solicitor

I'm very surprised that someone who has been using MSE for four years would fall for this old trick!

The usual advise is never to use a solicitor recommended by the EA or seller; most people want a completely independent solicitor whose only concern is for you and not whether they'll get repeat business from the EA in the future...

Smodlet

OP, the best experience you can glean from this is... Experience. The world does not turn according to your, my or anyone else's wishes. As soon as you have more than two entities in a transaction, it will move at the pace of the slowest. The only control you have is over the way you deal with the situation.

As already said, all you are doing is stressing out your vendors. What if something goes wrong? The better you deal with this now, the less chance they will decide you are more trouble than you are worth and decide to sell to someone else.

When you have no control over an unpleasant situation, think about how you will feel when it is over: Eyes on the prize! The greater dignity and respect you show others, the better you will feel... Or you can go through life peeing people off left, right and centre and waste ages fuming with resentment for what?

Chill for now and plan how you want to decorate, arrange your furniture, etc. Stressing solves nothing, believe me; if it did, I would rule the world by now.

Once you have your feet up, on your sofa, watching your favourite show/film/whatever and tucking into your snack of choice all this will seem like a bad dream. The less you stress now, the quicker it will fade. I wish you happiness in your new home.

Silian

MobileSaver wrote: »

I'm very surprised that someone who has been using MSE for four years would fall for this old trick!

The usual advise is never to use a solicitor recommended by the EA or seller; most people want a completely independent solicitor whose only concern is for you and not whether they'll get repeat business from the EA in the future...

I completely agree - I wouldn't have under normal circumstances and I actually already had my own solicitor lined up.

It's not really an EA - it's a "home move assist" company that convinced me. I decided to go along with it as I didn't want them to blame me should the process be held up for any reason (as they made the 28 day thing a condition of accepting the offer). The reviews of the solicitors was good as well.

In hindsight it was a mistake (and in foresight : I knew it was a huge risk when I did it) and not something I would do again.

gingerdad

Found the legal process in so many things to be more than annoying and its funny that charging £150 an hour they seem to ensure they bill the max - have found it with commercial leases, buying houses, buying businesses, trying to buy shares in a business and other things the whole process seem the be slowed by the most expensive bit.

In your situation i'd be putting in some deadlines and threatening to walk. Its a buyers market so you should be in a strong position. good luck

kingstreet

laidbackgjr wrote: »

Has their solicitor received the contract for the house they are buying yet? If not - not a lot of point in sending you one until they have one for the house they are buying?

How long is the chain above them, it could be that the sellers of the house your sellers are buying are also looking for a property - as others have said, chill out, there's lots to do in a chain and you can't control all of it.

This.

What is happening up the chain?

Are the agents regularly ensuring everyone is moving along at a similar pace? There is no prize for legging it off ahead of everyone else. It results only in potentially wasted expense.

ThePants999

The majority of MSE posters are, IMO, way too tolerant of poor service from solicitors. Yes, conveyancing always takes longer than you'd expect, and yes, the OP needs to learn patience. But this is rubbish. Failing to respond to repeated attempts at communication from the buyer's solicitor or their own client is massively unprofessional, and I would be pushing the vendors to change solicitor while it's still early in the process.

Okrib

Sorry, I don’t buy all this talk that this is acceptable in general. It should not take more than a month to have everything pretty much ready to exchange contracts.

I used to be an agent (in London) and this would be totally non on. We expected draft papers to go out immediately, and would regularly liaise to make sure things were progressing. Most of our sales were cash purchases, and chains were rare - which obviously speeded up matters. We aimed for exchange in 3 weeks and it was usually around 4.

My suspicion is that there is a delay in the chain somewhere and the vendor’s solicitor is trying not to incur extra charges for his client until whatever this issue is has been sorted out.

Ultimately, if the solicitor was not responding to instructions from their client then they would find themselves no longer instructed.

AdrianC

Okrib wrote: »

Sorry, I don’t buy all this talk that this is acceptable in general. It should not take more than a month to have everything pretty much ready to exchange contracts.

I used to be an agent (in London) and this would be totally non on. We expected draft papers to go out immediately...

Surely you're confusing the draft contract (which includes all the stuff the vendor needs to fill in and all the paperwork they need to provide) with the memorandum of sale?

Okrib

Memo of sale was something we issued to all parties once the offer was accepted.

We expected draft papers to be sent over based on the MoS in the first couple of days and would make sure our clients had all this information and were on top of it.