Any advice on using Barnard Marcus's conveyancing services for buying a property?

emily9

Hello everyone, 
Me and my partner are in the process of buying a property, with an offer made and awaiting for the vendor's decision. The EA is Barnard Marcus, and we wanted to know if anyone has any experience on using their conveyancing services.

To give some more background, we are renting atm, and buying the property together, and are both first time buyers and the property we want to buy is vacant, with no chain. 

I've searched on google but all the reviews I can find of them are those on their official websites, so of course they say they are the best. We have a mortgage broker that we've been working with for the past few months and we really like him so we declined the offer to switch brokers but we're still undecided on whether to continue with our solicitor. We've already paid deposit to them, and they were introduced to us by a friend. But we haven't done anything major yet or officially instructed them; just exchanged a few emails so we don't really know how good they are. 

In our chat with the EA, they were very insistent on using their internal mortgage broker and conveyancing services, for the following reasons:
- solicitors are taking an average of 100 days to complete their job nowadays, because of all the backlog and all that's going on with the property market right now (high number of applications, working from home, etc).
- we may miss the stamp duty holiday deadline next year, if we don't use them.
- the communication will be better than via other third parties.

I get what they're saying and to be honest, I am almost persuaded to switch. If we use their conveyancing services, I believe there won't be that trouble of having to chase them all the time or have the EA chase us as it should all be dealt with internally. But I don't know if this is all just a tactic to get me to use their services, and find later that I will regret my decision. 

Thanks in advance. Any advice would be really appreciated.

Slithery

Don't do it.

emily9

Slithery said:

Don't do it.

Could you elaborate a bit more as to why not? It does seem like the default is not to use such services, but I'm interested to know if anyone has had any good / bad experiences that they can share and we really just want to consider all options available. Thanks

davidmcn

emily9 said:

Slithery said:

Don't do it.

Could you elaborate a bit more as to why not?

Because you want your solicitor to be giving you independent advice, and how likely are they to be doing that if they're relying on the vendor's estate agent for their flow of work?

AdrianC

The vendor is paying the EA.
The EA doesn't get paid unless the sale completes.

The solicitor is the ONLY person on your side in the transaction...

So why would you use a solicitor who have a vested interest in keeping the vendor's EA happy?

MaryNB

My seller's EA tried to get me to use their mortgage advisor. They told me it would probably be faster and would put me in a more favorable position with the seller. I refused. Seller still accepted my offer. It took two and a half weeks for the lender to approve my mortgage offer (most of that time was waiting for the surveyor to view the house, the rest was a breeze) and completion has been pencilled in for the end of November. No delays whatsoever by doing it myself. 

I didn't want to use their mortgage advisor because they wouldn't be independent. I certainly would have refused to use their conveyancing if they offered. Independence is significantly more important with a solicitor. If you are concerned you could ask other conveyancing firms what their workload/timeline is like when you ask for quotes. There's no guarantee the EA's solicitors can do it faster, they're only encouraging you to use them because they benefit financially. 

If you want to move things ahead the best thing to do is get all your proof of finances ready for the solicitors, respond to anything right away and keep on top of them and the EA.

krazie_2004

I bought a house about 5 years ago through Barnard and Marcus in Ealing. As a FTB, they pretty much forced me into using their Conveyancing service (sequence) and their crappy mortgage broker who didn't have a clue. I was young and naive and have since learnt my lesson!

Woth regards to sequence, they were the worst I have used. Made mistakes all the way up to exchange getting the purchase price wrong as well as our mortgage product. They needed to be constantly chased for anything and when your caseworker decides to go on holiday,  there is no handover so you end up calling and chasing for basic things to be done. I now go out of my way to avoid this estate agent.

[Deleted User]

A good local solicitor will be better and cheaper than one of these conveyor belt conveyancing companies.   I used to work as an ea broker and i constantly butted heads with management over my refusal to use the solicitors attached to our company. 

The EA want you to use their conveyancing firm as they get around £400 referral fee each time.  No other reason

AskAsk

their mortgage broker does not offer the best deal on the market and they charge commission to boot.  their solicitors are more expensive than other solicitors, by a huge margin.  estate agents always do this and now buyers are always taken in with their BS.

SouthLondonUser

AdrianC said:

The vendor is paying the EA.
The EA doesn't get paid unless the sale completes.

The solicitor is the ONLY person on your side in the transaction...

So why would you use a solicitor who have a vested interest in keeping the vendor's EA happy?

Exactly! Have you ever heard about the fleecehold scandal? Eg cases where buyers hadn't realised the hidden costs that came with the properties. Would it surprise you to learn that, in many cases, the buyers had used the solicitors "recommended" by the estate agents?
The risks if you use a sloppy solicitor can be HUGE: you may end up with hidden costs or even with an unsellable properties.

I understand you are a first time buyer, but, please, don't give in to pressure.

AdrianC

SouthLondonUser said:

Exactly! Have you ever heard about the fleecehold scandal? Eg cases where buyers hadn't realised the hidden costs that came with the properties.

aka "people who didn't bother reading what they were buying".