Exchange and completion same day!

MaryNB

Mineral1 said:

MaryNB said:

Make sure all the money is will your solicitor. I had to send over the 10% house deposit before exchange and my solicitor originally told me to wait until I exchanged to send the rest of the cash I was putting towards the purchase. The gap between the two narrowed and I nearly didn't leave myself enough time to transfer it all (I was using 3 faster payments over 3 days). Make sure you know if you can use Faster Payments or give yourself time to set up CHAPS.

How do you know if you can do faster payments or have to use CHAPS? It's the first time I've ever sent this much money, can it just be done via internet banking or should I be telling my bank in advance. Thanks

You can use either. I had to do 4 faster payments over 4 days due to transaction limits but I could do it all via online banking and didn't pay a fee.

CHAPS has a fee (no sure if it's the same for every bank but mine charges £25) but there's no transaction limit. My bank requires me to set up CHAPS in branch. 

I knew my bank and my solcitors' bank both used faster payments. FP should arrive in the receiver's account within 2 hours. The Haifax online daily limit for FP is £25k and if anything went wrong I could go into branch and the limit for FP is £100k. 
When you send the money, send a small amount first (like £2) or something and then phone your solicitors on the number you've used before to contact them (or the number on their website) to confirm they've received it before sending the rest. 

badger09

Mineral1 said:

badger09 said:

Mineral1 said:

MaryNB said:

Make sure all the money is will your solicitor. I had to send over the 10% house deposit before exchange and my solicitor originally told me to wait until I exchanged to send the rest of the cash I was putting towards the purchase. The gap between the two narrowed and I nearly didn't leave myself enough time to transfer it all (I was using 3 faster payments over 3 days). Make sure you know if you can use Faster Payments or give yourself time to set up CHAPS.

How do you know if you can do faster payments or have to use CHAPS? It's the first time I've ever sent this much money, can it just be done via internet banking or should I be telling my bank in advance. Thanks

Mineral1 said:

MaryNB said:

Make sure all the money is will your solicitor. I had to send over the 10% house deposit before exchange and my solicitor originally told me to wait until I exchanged to send the rest of the cash I was putting towards the purchase. The gap between the two narrowed and I nearly didn't leave myself enough time to transfer it all (I was using 3 faster payments over 3 days). Make sure you know if you can use Faster Payments or give yourself time to set up CHAPS.

How do you know if you can do faster payments or have to use CHAPS? It's the first time I've ever sent this much money, can it just be done via internet banking or should I be telling my bank in advance. Thanks

You need to check your bank's website. That will tell you their daily faster payment limit, how to do a CHAPS payment & how much it costs. Pre COVID, some banks insisted on branch visit, but I doubt many do now.

Which bank?

Thanks, its Barclays and the website isnt very helpful as depending on what page you read it gives two different answers! I think I might ring them tbh.

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/arrange-chaps/

MaryNB

badger09 said:

greatcrested said:

Check your bank's website or call them - most banks have a limit on the size of Faster Payments, either per day or per transaction. So you may need to do several transactions if the amount is above your bank's limit.

Make 100% sure you get the destimation code right - there have been cases of scammers intercepting emails from solicitors, and changing the details to their own! Double check the details with the solicitor, and/or send a £1.00 FP as a test & confirm it arrives.

Good advice, but sending a £1 test payment shouldn't be necessary as presumably a payment on initial instruction will already have been made to solicitor's correct account. Also, small test payments followed by much larger payment have been known to trip bank's security process. Shouldn't happen with a CHAPS payment though.

Not always. My solicitors were going to take the initial payment on card when I went into branch to show my ID. I only sent my payment via bank transfer because their card machine wasn't working. 

grumiofoundation

MaryNB said:

badger09 said:

greatcrested said:

Check your bank's website or call them - most banks have a limit on the size of Faster Payments, either per day or per transaction. So you may need to do several transactions if the amount is above your bank's limit.

Make 100% sure you get the destimation code right - there have been cases of scammers intercepting emails from solicitors, and changing the details to their own! Double check the details with the solicitor, and/or send a £1.00 FP as a test & confirm it arrives.

Good advice, but sending a £1 test payment shouldn't be necessary as presumably a payment on initial instruction will already have been made to solicitor's correct account. Also, small test payments followed by much larger payment have been known to trip bank's security process. Shouldn't happen with a CHAPS payment though.

Not always. My solicitors were going to take the initial payment on card when I went into branch to show my ID. I only sent my payment via bank transfer because their card machine wasn't working. 

Yep we paid first payment by card machine. 

Thrugelmir

livbundy89 said:

Am supposed to be exchanging and completing on the same day this week. Absolutely terrified - anyone on here had experience of this and how quick/simple the process is? Or if you've had a bad experience, what was it that went wrong? My solicitor has been pretty poor in terms of communication and there have been hurdles every step of the way so I'm eager for this to go smoothly! If anyone can think of anything that I should double check with my solicitor before the Big Day, your advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance, all!
Liv

Have you spoken to the EA to find out what's happening elsewhere in the chain. 

Angela_D_3

My solicitors have written to me with their bank details to ensure I don’t send money to any scammers emailing me at exactly the right moment and intercepting the cash. 

I think a lot of security measures  are being introduced right now,  is that speeding things up or slowing things down