arrrghh! slow, slow solicitors

hierrodaknuckles

need to vent my frustration.

we are in the process of buying and selling. the people buying our place are ftb's and the place we are buying is empty, with the owner not buying anywhere else, so it's a very simple chain.

12 weeks in and we still have not got to exchange. we signed our purchase contract 3 weeks ago but the sale of our property is just draggin on and on and it all appears to be because of our buyers solicitors. our buyers are desperate to move in and keep chasing them, our solicitor is chasing them but they just seem so slow. They have now, today, just requested information again that was given over 6 weeks ago - what have they done with it? They have also come back with further queries relating to stuff that answered 6/7 weeks ago too. I mean, bloody hell, they waited 2 weeks after the issue of the mortgage offer before thinking that just maybe it has got lost in the post and requested a duplicate to be sent to them :rolleyes:

and breathe.:D

anyone got any tips on how to get solicitors to pull their fingers out?

Curv

hierrodaknuckles wrote: »

anyone got any tips on how to get solicitors to pull their fingers out?

Get their client to tell them you are going to pull out if you haven't exchanged by (date). It doesn't need to be a real threat, but it might help them to focus on the job in hand...

ameliarate

I have just sold, completed + moved.:j
All our delays were caused by slow solicitors. Unfortunately I never did work out how to speed them up. I did however find the after sales team at the estate agents were very good. Try the pulling out tactic on them they stand to lose loads of money of you do. Good luck, hope it goes well and speedily!

lotto-dreamer

anyone got any tips on how to get solicitors to pull their fingers out?

That does seem an inordinately long time to get to exchange - but do you have the whole story? What your buyers say to you may not be what their solicitors are looking at. It might not be that straightfoward if they are trying to get revised mortgage offer, copies planning permissions etc.

Are the FTB's getting a 100% mortgage? If they don't have a deposit they might be looking at exchange and completion on the same day.

Only advice I can give is get your estate agents involved as well - they can phone the solicitors acting for your purchaser and try to get the full story (after all the agents are getting their commission from you) and report back to you.

Without knowing what your buyer's solicitors are waiting for it's hard to advise.

Nag your own solicitors as much as possible to chase your buyer's solicitors as well. They won't mind (too much) they'll hopefully just put your file at the top of the pile to get it sorted and get rid of you

hierrodaknuckles

congrats on your move Ameliarate.


thanks for the advice but I don't really want to do the threatening to pull out tactic as i know it's not the buyers fault. I have however, been hassling the after sales team at the EA all the way through this process because at least they can speak directly to the buyer and pass on info quick and easy. The solicitors are so long winded that it takes a week to get a question in, passed on, addressed and responded to.

Maybe i should give them another call and get them to contat the buyers - they may not even know their solicitors are still messing about with queries i guess, and maybe they can chase them yet again :rolleyes:

carli_h

I thought I'd hopefully give you a light at the end of the tunnel. It took us 14 weeks to exchange, there were a few complications, but I won't bore you with that. We exchanged last week and complete next.

Like yourself, we only had 3 in the chain with a property developer buying ours and we were buying an empty house.

As lotto-dreamer suggested you should talk to your EA, who it turn could see if your buyers could help out.

It's frustrating but you will get there in the end!

djbd1973

I know exactly what you mean. When I bought my Buy to Let, I bought it off of a good friend of mine. We agreed it all over an afternoon and shook hands on it. The money side of the deal was sorted within a few days and there was no chain, no agent - just the legals to do and my friends solicitor was his son whom I have a good working relationship with too. Unfortunately my solicitors took 5 months to complete the deal, with all the checks and questions going back and forth and the communication from them was bad. I had more chance of getting hold of the Queen than I did getting to talk to my solicitor. Never again.