Advice on what solicitors should be doing re: our sale and purchase

Gillibobs

Hello all.

This is myself and my partner's first time selling a property and just wanted some advice in terms of the solicitors role and what they should be doing and when.

We initially sold our flat at the end of october. In terms of correspondance from the solicitors we did receive all this fairly quickly and they drew up a draft contract which we received and was sent to the buyers solicitor. However our buyer then pulled out. The same solicitors are handling our purchase of a house. Luckily the vendor agreed to keep it off the market until we had sold again. I assume that everything in terms of paperwork and contracts etc was put on hold. Around two weeks ago we accepted another offer on our flat. Since then we have heard nothing from the solicitor. We have tried to contact them over the last two days only to be told the person handling our account is away and no-one else can access the file to find out where we are up to. We do have access to our file online. Having looked at this it seems nothing has been added to this since our buyer pulled out except a note to say the agent rang them to advise we had a new buyer (on the 30th Nov). Absolutely nothing has been done in terms of our purchase according to this and papers/information they requested from the managing agents of our flats haven't been received or chased up since early November.

I just wanted some advice as to whether this is normal and at what stage they should all be at now. Ideally having had our first buyer pull out we want everything to be wrapped up as quickly as possible what with Xmas looming I can imagine everything will grind to a halt for a couple of weeks.

LandyAndy

Having done all the necessary work for the first, abortive, sale I presume your solicitor is waiting to hear from your new buyer's solicitor before he can do anything further on the sale of your current property.

As for your purchase I would be pestering the solicitor for a progress report etc as soon as they return.

Gillibobs

Thanks LandyAndy,

I thought that might be the case in terms of the sale. We've actually called the agent as we couldn't get through to the solicitor and apparently the buyers solicitor was waiting for something from the agent that supposedly had been sent last week!

The thing that does concern me is the purchase side as this was never stopped as was the sale with the buyer pulling out. We will be onto the solicitor first thing again tomorrow, hopefully they will actually be around! very frustrating that no-one else there can seem to even let us know where we're at.