What happens to your documents when you pull out to buy another property?

hopeitwill

Hi everyone,

My question is around what happens to all of the personal documents you send over to the solicitor if you want to pull out from the purchase? Do they simply get shredded and binned?

Normally, we are buying with a gifted deposit so we have a lot of documents showing accrual of the finances, certified documents like certified IDs by notary publics etc. Do we collect them all again if we want to pull out and buy another house?

Just asking if anyone had any experience of this.

davidmcn

You can ask for them back if you want. Otherwise the file just gets archived / shredded etc in the same way as if the transaction proceeded. 

pinkteapot

It may be more cost-effective to use the same solicitor for the next house, as some of the work they've already done may be transferable (e.g. checking your IDs). Unless you don't like your solicitor and want to switch of course.  

Thrugelmir

Might be easiest to use the same solicitor if you plan to purchase an alternative property instead. Given a lot of work has already been done. 

hopeitwill

Thanks all, we hate the solicitor. Worst service I have ever had in my life, and I am not a fussy person, I can wait if things are taking a long time, especially with Covid. It's just that we cannot get any answers to simple questions like confirming what was sent to them was sufficient enough. Or if they could tell us what stage they are at? We probably asked this once after 6 weeks and maybe once more last week, 14 weeks into this.

They have good reviews on certain things, like insurance claims etc. but the reviews for their conveyancing arm is quite bad. Since the firm was on the lender's panel, we just picked right when we were applying for the mortgage which shows me not to do anything before doing a research.

And additional question regarding this, if we choose to stay with this purchase, which is unlikely but possible, and we want to change the solicitor, does the whole case get sent to the new solicitor? With searches and everything?

I'm sure it will still add a bit more time to what's been done though.