Solicitor/Conveyancer - recommended by Estate agent

Okey00001

Hi, it has been recommended to not to use them -  what are the main reasons for not using a solicitor or conveyancer to sell your house? 

Martin_the_Unjust

Use one, just not the one recommended by the estate agent or developer.

Find your own.

Okey00001

Martin_the_Unjust said:

Use one, just not the one recommended by the estate agent or developer.

Find your own.

I am new to this and the reasons may be obvious but not to me - I actually need to know the reasons why we should not use the recommended one?

MaryNB

The solicitor's company will be getting business from the developer and will be less inclined to argue any clauses in the paperwork for fear of losing future work from the developer. You want a solicitor who will argue on your behalf and not give a fig if they upset the developer.

My friend used the developer's recommended solicitor recently and when an issue with the terms arose her solicitor told her not to bother arguing it, saying everyone buying a house on the development has the same clause. 

A lot of the issues with the leasehold houses scandal came about because buyers were not clearly informed about the negative aspects of their leases. Many people used the developer's recommended solicitors because of the financial incentives. Now many of those houses are unmortgagable.

eddddy

Often an estate agent isn't recommending a solicitor or conveyancer because they are good - they are recommending them because they pay the estate agent a large fee for introducing you. Perhaps a few hundred pounds.


As an example, quite a few years ago I dealt with an estate agent who recommended a solicitor firm. The solicitor quoted a legal fee of £600. But £450 of that went back to the estate agent as a referral fee. So you pay £600 and get £150 worth of legal services.

There's also the issue that if an estate agent is giving a solicitor lots of work, the solicitor might be more worried about keeping the estate agent happy than doing a good job for you.

So it's often better to find your own solicitor or conveyancer.

Okey00001

I understand now, thank you for explaining.

Drawingaline

It can be mixed. We used a solicitor recommended for our first purchase and she was excellent, used her to buy, extend our lease and also sell. However she wasn't their first choice as our vendor was using them.

Second purchase used the recommended ones. Awful, awful service. Huge online firm, was a complete shambles.

This time the solicitors recommended a local firm, I read online reviews, liked that it was local (even though everyone was WFH last year) tbh I would have maybe chosen them anyway after independent research. They were also upfront in their quote how much they were paying they ea. The sales progressor had a really good working relationship with them which also helped.

Take the name of the firm and get a quote, then do reviews before instructing them. If it is a new build development I wouldn't use them though for the issue above, if it is an older property through an EA sale then it can work out, but do your research.

owenjt

See www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/buying-a-home-timeline:

DON'T automatically use the estate agents' firm.
It's probably a commission-based recommendation. If you speak to it, use its price as a benchmark.

p00hsticks

Whilst I agree that there are the dangers mentioned above, in that conveyancers recommended by developers or estate agents may be paying referral fees to get the business and/or may be tempted not to be completely impartial because they want repeat business, I think it also needs to be borne in mind that the estate agent essentially wants to see the sale over the line as quickly and smoothly as possible. It's not really in their interest to recommend a rubbish conveyancer whose going to drag out or mess up the sale just for the sake of a small referral fee. Our estate agent didn't recommend a particualr solicitor, but did warn us off the cheap online conveyancers ...

Bendy_House

As I understand it, the EA must declare what commission they are receiving from their recommended conveyancer. As said above, the sums can be considerable.

If the EA received 'only' £50 for what is zero effort, then at least the conveyancer would still be getting the lion's share, and would hopefully be doing their job properly. If an EA with integrity actually believed a certain conveyancer was better than average, then it would be easy to recommend them with a "Yes, we do get a small token sum for this recommendation, but we wouldn't do so unless we found them to be genuinely good..." But when it's typically £175 (as it was in the case of a relative around here a few years back) out of a conveyancing quote of ~£600, then the suspicion always has to be that the EA is looking at the back-hander, and the deprived conveyancer will just want the job to go through with as little hassle as possible - that's a double-whammy in my view.

I guess it must be 'worth it' for the conveyancer too or else they wouldn't take such a hit. But that also begs the suspicion that if they were to do their job 'thoroughly' and forensically on behalf of their client (you), this might pee-off the EA as risking delays and they'll look for a new conveyancer to 'recommend' instead.

The harder I look at this, the less I see of what benefit it could possibly provide the customer, and a few ways it could be to their disadvantage.

Frankly, I think it stinks. Especially when sizeable sums are involved.

user1977

p00hsticks said:

I think it also needs to be borne in mind that the estate agent essentially wants to see the sale over the line as quickly and smoothly as possible. It's not really in their interest to recommend a rubbish conveyancer whose going to drag out or mess up the sale just for the sake of a small referral fee.

Yes (and it's less of an issue for selling than buying) but the risk though is that the methods used to get the deal done "smoothly" or quickly aren't necessarily in the best interests of the client e.g. the conveyancers might be tempted to recommend that you cave in to unreasonable demands of the other party.