Is conveyancing extra slow at the moment?

Slithery

teachfast said:

teachfast said:

Slithery said:

teachfast said:

Gavin83 said:

teachfast said:

Gavin83 said:

teachfast said:

Tiglet2 said:

Swash said:

TBagpuss said:

teachfast said:

Greed has made them take on more work than they can deal with, so they do the last thing they were sat on for. Must be a horribly stressful way to work. 

It's not greed (or at least not on the part of the lawyers!) It's more that the demand for cheap conveyancing means that the only way to make it viable to carry out is to deal with large volumes. If you want more attention from your conveyancer you need to be willing to pay for their time, rather than a low fixed fee.

Right now, you've got the perfect storm of more people than usual seeking to move because of the stamp duty holiday, combined with a lot of people working from home which slows things down.

I see this a lot on this forum. As someone who is currently 7 months into what should have been a simple conveyancing process, if my solicitor gave me a heads up that they were going to be painfully slow and uncommunicative, then I would have gladly paid double to get it over the line. The problem is, they don't tell you. So how are we supposed to know that when we sign the dotted line? 

The fees they charge would be a good clue or a recommendation from a friend who has used the solicitor and been happy with the service.  Also, bear in mind, no solicitor can guarantee speed, since they rely on third parties to provide essential information, nor do they know in advance what legal issues may be discovered during the process. 

Solicitors would normally charge around £200 per hour or more for their time.  Every time you telephoned or they wrote to you, they would be adding that to their fees. 

A "fixed fee" for conveyancing that can take months to reach completion is operating under very fine margins and so the client contact is minimal. 

The problem is that clients do not want to pay the kind of money that makes hand-holding, being on the other end of the phone in an instant and available for advice whenever you need it, possible.

Consumers have driven the price down, but the result is firms with far too many clients than they can cope with and many unqualified staff doing the admin.   The solicitor in charge of your file, as well as hundreds of other files, will only look at the file at key stages during the process.  While they are waiting for something from a third party, the file will remain in the pending pile, to be chased periodically.

And sticking to this position just further damages the reputation of the profession. £200 is far, far too much money for the level of qualification required. They demand it because they can with people who are in the do-do and have to pay. It also provides people with a level of indemnity  It's not what their time is actually worth, but it certainly goes to their heads to think so.

Then don't use a solicitor. You could always do the work yourself if it's that easy.

Or expect those who are trained and paid to do the job they profess to do for you? 

Ultimately with everything in life (way beyond just legal council) people have 3 options:

1) Pay top dollar and get top levels of service.
2) Pay the minimum possible and get the minimum possible service.
3) Do it yourself.

People often want to pay the prices of option 2 but with the service of option 1 and that often just doesn’t work.

With conveyancing people often pay a small fixed fee and in return get average service and most of the work done by paralegals. If you want rapid service, a solicitor on the end of the phone and them to do 100% of the work then pay for it but it’ll cost several times as much. 

Plenty of people complaining about local specialist solicitors as well. They're often just as bad but with an added layer of self-important arrogance towards their paying clients. 

There are also plenty of people using 'local specialist solicitors' who have a great experience. Your 'all solicitors are terrible' line that you repeat on every remotely relevant thread is starting to make you sound like Crashy....

I've never once said 'all solicitors' are anything. If I have, please let me know where.

Didn't think so...

Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten about you. How about this one...

teachfast said:

Because she is demonstrating a complete ambivalence and incompetence that has become a well-known characteristic of the whole profession.

Ricky116

As far as I can tell, 'solicitor action' is only a small proportion of the waiting time when it comes to a transaction. Most of the time is spend in this nebulous zone where maybe something is happening somewhere, but maybe it isn't.

It seems to me like there should be a "transaction dashboard" that captures the state of all the actors involved with a purchase. The finger of doom then points at the part or person that is the current blockage. Everyone follows the finger of doom until the purchase is complete, and everyone knows where the next-thing is coming from.

I have been told that we are 'waiting for inquiries'. What those inquiries might be, who knows. Are they questions with an answer? Does the answer necessitate an external source like a local search report to arrive? The needlessly opaque nature of a house purchase is 99.9% of the stress. 

People say to "push your solicitor". What even does that mean? Should I pressure my solicitor to wait for a reply more intensely? I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs while being told "the best way to make it faster is to push your solicitor", but my solicitor has nothing to do with the current hold up, as far as I can tell.

Gavin83

TBG01 said:

Define "we need a quick sale". What's that timescale? Is it the usual 8 - 12 weeks it can take for a typical straight forward transaction, or quicker? If quicker can the buyer meet your timescale? Can you respond to all enquiries in a timely manner? Is the title sound?  Basically is everything in place for a quick sale or are you dictating the pace of things without knowing what goes into a transaction?

Is that really the average? I know a lot of people who have bought property (basically everyone I know) and none of them have completed that quickly. Most seem to take 5/6 months and this was pre-covid. My friend bought a house convinced it would take 6 weeks as there was no chain at all and I told him he was being optimistic. Ended up taking 6 months. Admittedly he got some money back from the solicitor for the delays but even so the process has never struck me as being quick. 

mat1964

the solicitor we are using for 2 sales and 1 purchase is really good.  Always answers emails same day and searches, enquires were all requested really quickly.  Problem we are having is with my GF's sale where the solicitor is the complete opposite - won't communicate with our solicitor, has not raised enquiries and gets annoyed if the EA calls her.   

teachfast

Slithery said:

teachfast said:

teachfast said:

Slithery said:

teachfast said:

Gavin83 said:

teachfast said:

Gavin83 said:

teachfast said:

Tiglet2 said:

Swash said:

TBagpuss said:

teachfast said:

Greed has made them take on more work than they can deal with, so they do the last thing they were sat on for. Must be a horribly stressful way to work. 

It's not greed (or at least not on the part of the lawyers!) It's more that the demand for cheap conveyancing means that the only way to make it viable to carry out is to deal with large volumes. If you want more attention from your conveyancer you need to be willing to pay for their time, rather than a low fixed fee.

Right now, you've got the perfect storm of more people than usual seeking to move because of the stamp duty holiday, combined with a lot of people working from home which slows things down.

I see this a lot on this forum. As someone who is currently 7 months into what should have been a simple conveyancing process, if my solicitor gave me a heads up that they were going to be painfully slow and uncommunicative, then I would have gladly paid double to get it over the line. The problem is, they don't tell you. So how are we supposed to know that when we sign the dotted line? 

The fees they charge would be a good clue or a recommendation from a friend who has used the solicitor and been happy with the service.  Also, bear in mind, no solicitor can guarantee speed, since they rely on third parties to provide essential information, nor do they know in advance what legal issues may be discovered during the process. 

Solicitors would normally charge around £200 per hour or more for their time.  Every time you telephoned or they wrote to you, they would be adding that to their fees. 

A "fixed fee" for conveyancing that can take months to reach completion is operating under very fine margins and so the client contact is minimal. 

The problem is that clients do not want to pay the kind of money that makes hand-holding, being on the other end of the phone in an instant and available for advice whenever you need it, possible.

Consumers have driven the price down, but the result is firms with far too many clients than they can cope with and many unqualified staff doing the admin.   The solicitor in charge of your file, as well as hundreds of other files, will only look at the file at key stages during the process.  While they are waiting for something from a third party, the file will remain in the pending pile, to be chased periodically.

And sticking to this position just further damages the reputation of the profession. £200 is far, far too much money for the level of qualification required. They demand it because they can with people who are in the do-do and have to pay. It also provides people with a level of indemnity  It's not what their time is actually worth, but it certainly goes to their heads to think so.

Then don't use a solicitor. You could always do the work yourself if it's that easy.

Or expect those who are trained and paid to do the job they profess to do for you? 

Ultimately with everything in life (way beyond just legal council) people have 3 options:

1) Pay top dollar and get top levels of service.
2) Pay the minimum possible and get the minimum possible service.
3) Do it yourself.

People often want to pay the prices of option 2 but with the service of option 1 and that often just doesn’t work.

With conveyancing people often pay a small fixed fee and in return get average service and most of the work done by paralegals. If you want rapid service, a solicitor on the end of the phone and them to do 100% of the work then pay for it but it’ll cost several times as much. 

Plenty of people complaining about local specialist solicitors as well. They're often just as bad but with an added layer of self-important arrogance towards their paying clients. 

There are also plenty of people using 'local specialist solicitors' who have a great experience. Your 'all solicitors are terrible' line that you repeat on every remotely relevant thread is starting to make you sound like Crashy....

I've never once said 'all solicitors' are anything. If I have, please let me know where.

Didn't think so...

Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten about you. How about this one...

teachfast said:

Because she is demonstrating a complete ambivalence and incompetence that has become a well-known characteristic of the whole profession.

Not bad, but no cigar I think. A characteristic of the whole profession doesn't imply each individual shows it. In your searches you will note that I have been really careful never to state it is every conveyancer or solicitor. I'm sure there are some good ones. But the proportion of bad apples is just too high. It's effectively endemic.