Conveyancing Solicitor Response Times

Mrcsmrs

I know everyone is busy at the moment and the market has gone a bit crazy but how long would you expect to wait for a response to a question you’ve asked your solicitor about your stamp duty? Ours state in their contract that they will try to respond to queries within a working day but I’m almost a week on from my query (which affects how much of a mortgage we need) and I still don’t have a response from them. I’ve called this morning and emailed yesterday and still nothing. 

How quickly are other people’s conveyancers getting back to them at the moment? I don’t want to become that nightmare client that they dread hearing from but equally I need a response. It’s been 3 full clear working days not including today, since my query and nothing. Is it unreasonable in the current climate to expect a response by now? Are other solicitors quicker? We’ve done everything they’ve asked the same day, signed contracts, sent money etc. If we’re going to consider changing I’m guessing earlier is better than later, but when is the point of no return? 

shaunad93

My solicitor never responded to any emails. I ended up calling them instead and from that point I’ve been in regular contact with the practice manager. Give them a ring.

Mrcsmrs

Thank you. I did that this morning and still awaiting a call back. I guess it’s pretty common at the moment. 

shaunad93

Yep. My solicitor got changed without my knowing and I’ve literally never had any communication with her! 

Tiglet2

I know everyone is busy at the moment and the market has gone a bit crazy 
I think you've just answered your question above.  The firm I work for still has a lot of staff furloughed and for those that are not furloughed, the majority are working from home with occasional visits to the office to pick up and drop off files.  Response times have therefore dropped considerably.  While ideally they should respond to your query fairly soon now, it does depend on how many other clients are also expecting answers to queries.  Could you ask your actual question on here?  SDLT Geek is the expert when it comes to stamp duty and you may get a quicker reply!

badger09

Mrcsmrs said:

I know everyone is busy at the moment and the market has gone a bit crazy but how long would you expect to wait for a response to a question you’ve asked your solicitor about your stamp duty? Ours state in their contract that they will try to respond to queries within a working day but I’m almost a week on from my query (which affects how much of a mortgage we need) and I still don’t have a response from them. I’ve called this morning and emailed yesterday and still nothing. 

How quickly are other people’s conveyancers getting back to them at the moment? I don’t want to become that nightmare client that they dread hearing from but equally I need a response. It’s been 3 full clear working days not including today, since my query and nothing. Is it unreasonable in the current climate to expect a response by now? Are other solicitors quicker? We’ve done everything they’ve asked the same day, signed contracts, sent money etc. If we’re going to consider changing I’m guessing earlier is better than later, but when is the point of no return? 

You could ask the question on here, or on the Cutting Tax board.

Or if its a straightforward transaction there's a SDLT calulator here: 
https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/calculate-stamp-duty-land-tax/#/intro

fiwen30

We've never had our emails answered, and we're often put through to the overflow service when we phone our solicitors. I've found that leaving a message with the overflow service doesn't mean you'll get a call back either, and instead I've started to just call periodically in the hopes of getting through to the actual reception, who are far better about communicating messages/call back requests, if you can't be put through immediately.

I'll also note that we haven't ever met or spoken directly to our conveyancing solicitor. It's pretty telling that he has 2 lovely, helpful assistants who handle the basic general enquiries of clients, to free up his time.

greatcrested

What's your query?

Same day response on here!

CBush86

My conveyancers now have an auto response to emails stating due to Corona and the SDLT holiday, they are extremely busy and to only contact them if urgent, they will make contact when they have to. When I first instructed them back in July I would get a response to an email the next working day, but not now. Crazy times atm. 

Mrcsmrs

Thanks all, I’ve asked it on here already and SDLT geek has responded in the affirmative that we shouldn’t need to pay quite as much as we thought. That said I do appreciate the response but feel I can’t reduce our mortgage amount by £20k because of a thread on a forum. 

Basically we’re buying a property with an annex but it’s classed as a second home for us so the surcharge applies, what we wanted to know from the solicitor is would he be happy to put our stamp duty return in with Multiple Dwellings Relief applied because of the annex. In almost a week I still haven’t heard from him and we’re getting further into the mortgage application process so I don’t want to get to a point where we’ve taken that £20k on the mortgage if we don’t need to. From my own research and a previous thread on here I think it’ll be fine to apply MDR but having initially said it should be ok our solicitor is now saying not, and hasn’t answered my latest query. Hence my wondering if other conveyancing solicitors were the same. From the above it does sound like they’re actually pretty good since I’ve actually spoken to him myself so I’ll just hang on and hope we don’t have to confirm the mortgage amount definitely just yet. 

steampowered

A lot of conveyancers are not solicitors, and even those that are often claim they are not SDLT experts - certainly less knowledgeable about the technicalities of SDLT than the fantastic SDLT geek! It's possible that the conveyancer won't be able to give you a definitive answer to your question and that you might get told to contact a tax adviser if your query is considered complex.

Could it be worth keeping your mortgage at a higher amount regardless of the answer to your SDLT query?

You can put the additional £20k into a stocks & shares ISA, where it is likely to generate far superior returns to the interest you will be paying on the mortgage. You would have the flexibility to sell the ISA and overpay the mortgage in future if you decided you wanted to do that.