Purple Bricks - Buyer

Firsttimebuyer2021

Hi, Has anybody on this forum had experience of buying a house through Purple Bricks? We have made an offer and waiting to hear back from the closing date. I was wondering if as a buyer are we locked into using their solicitors or can we use our own? And is there any other fees we need to be made aware of? Iv seen the reviews online and they don’t seem that good however they are mainly from people selling rather than people buying 

lonibra

It's usually handled by the vendor rather than PB themselves so the experience depends on them.

You don't have to use their solicitors.

No other fees to the buyer afaik.

PB's involvement in the whole process is usually minimal.

purplebutterfly

I can't see any legal reason why your cannot use your own conveyancer.

We are buyers with a different online estate agency and they tried to get me to sign on with their conveyancer - telling me it would make things quicker and they'd give me a good deal.

I declined as I already had a local solicitor lined up who I trust AND who is charging me less than their "good deal".

The conveyancer they use is one of the online conveyancing sheds that deals with thousands of sales and has no customer care whatsoever.  I know this because our vendor was persuaded by the EA to use them and they are terrible.  

Everything is taking twice as long as it should do because of this conveyancer and they are sending documents over without checking them, with big blank spaces where there should be information and, sometimes, "misplacing" documentation sent to them by the vendor. 

We are FTB and being able to easily talk to our solicitor on the phone or via email has been a godsend.  He's holding our hand through every step and we need that support.  

In contrast, our vendor has never spoken to anyone at their conveyancer and everything goes through the EA Sales Progressor - who seems like a lovely young girl, completely out of her depth and desperately flailing for answers. 

However, that is only my limited experience and may not be representative of all online conveyancers.

NameUnavailable

Firsttimebuyer2021 said:

Hi, Has anybody on this forum had experience of buying a house through Purple Bricks? We have made an offer and waiting to hear back from the closing date. I was wondering if as a buyer are we locked into using their solicitors or can we use our own? And is there any other fees we need to be made aware of? Iv seen the reviews online and they don’t seem that good however they are mainly from people selling rather than people buying 

Please don't say it's a 'modern method of auction' sale?

sheramber

Could be  Scottish purchase. Closing date is quite common if more than one interested party.

Firsttimebuyer2021

@lonibra Thank you, That’s what I thought that the fees would be charged to the seller and not purchaser

@purplebutterfly Thank you, We are using a local solicitor to us to place offers already, as well that all our family have used, I’m already an anxious person so using a solicitor close to us and “hold your hand” as you say really is a god send!

@NameUnavailable Not that I’m aware of, the house is currently occupied and the sellers are moving to a new build, Iv had a look on the ad and can’t see anything regarding a modern method of an auction. The closing date is due to them receiving a large amount of offers unfortunately 

Firsttimebuyer2021

@sheramber Yes it’s a Scottish purchase, Unfortunately already lost out to a few properties with closing dates...I guess they are good for sellers but not so good for buyers? 

sheramber

yes, I bought last year and everything was going to a closing date within 10  days   of going on the market for prices well over the home report price.



 

Rankin21

We bought our property through purple bricks and although the effort they put in is minimal I deffo think it affected the sellers more then it did us. 

They did make a point of saying to us how poor the conveyancing was when they used the one recommended by purple bricks we used a local one and had a much better experience.

they only real thing that affected us as the buyer was the lack of care on completion pretty much everyone including the solicitors washed their hands of it once the money had moved across and we were left scrambling through purple bricks portal to try and arrange picking up the keys. Luckily the vendors were still in the country so could collect from them but it took a further 2-3 weeks to get the set back off purple bricks 

Kaysee24

We just bought a property sold through PB with the seller using their conveyancers.
Never again would I agree to purchase a house no matter how much I loved it if the vendors were using the same. Our vendor apologised and said she would never use again, she lodged a complaint about them too.
Absolutely appalling, my (local) solicitor was tearing his hair out, I kept my vendor informed and she had to chase chase chase. Things that were laid out as necessary in March (land registry title upgrade) weren't even applied for until June (and we wanted to beat Sdlt, my seller needed to) after much stress including a mess up with mortgage draw down on day of planned exchange we eventually managed to exchange 28th and complete 30th.

Sorry for the long post, my short answer is don't use PB conveyancing!
Good luck with your purchase.

Firsttimebuyer2021

Hi everyone, Just a quick update unfortunately never got the property...The search continues