Conveyancing - how long to send the contract

Thrugelmir

urban469 said:

I wish it was easy to speak to my conveyancer. I send emails and don't get replies. I call and get put through to someone else, then I ask for her to call me back, and instead I get a one line email.

Unfortunately time costs money. Employees would get little productive work done if they had to stop what they were doing to answer an ad-hoc telephone call.  The conveyancers will have many clients. Focussing on those nearing exchange and completion will always be the priority. 

urban469

I understand that, and I'm being very patient waiting for replies to calls or emails. The problem is that I'm getting nothing, and I don't understand why they're sitting on a contract which they've had for a month, and which I was told was about to be sent two weeks ago.

GoogleMeNow

Ok..... not exactly helpful!

I would suggest that if your solicitor has had the draft contract for a month, then I wouldn't have thought they were at the report stage yet.  So, I imagine that enquiries are still ongoing.  This is often the part where, as far as you're concerned, it does go very quiet.  This is because they send out enquiries to numerous third parties and are often waiting for the responses to come in.  Some of the responses may not fully answer the enquiry, so the solicitor may want further clarification on several points.  They often don't update you during this time as 'outstanding enquiries' are outstanding until fully responded to, which can take a month or more.

MyHomeMove are a volume based conveyancer, which translates as they have many many clients, so they do the work but don't have capacity for providing continuous updates, particularly where there is no update to provide.

I can only suggest trying to be patient and not get stressed because they haven't responded fully to your emails/telephone calls.

urban469

GoogleMeNow said:

This is because they send out enquiries to numerous third parties and are often waiting for the responses to come in.  Some of the responses may not fully answer the enquiry, so the solicitor may want further clarification on several points.  

That's really helpful, thanks. Just FYI, all of the searches are back, and I have the search report. When you say they send enquiries to third parties, is that different from the searches? (I thought enquiries just go to the seller's solicitor).

GoogleMeNow

urban469 said:

GoogleMeNow said:

This is because they send out enquiries to numerous third parties and are often waiting for the responses to come in.  Some of the responses may not fully answer the enquiry, so the solicitor may want further clarification on several points.  

That's really helpful, thanks. Just FYI, all of the searches are back, and I have the search report. When you say they send enquiries to third parties, is that different from the searches? (I thought enquiries just go to the seller's solicitor).

Yes, your solicitor will send enquiries to the seller's solicitor, but the seller's solicitor will have to split all the enquiries up to send to various third parties, for example, some will go directly to the seller, some to Land Registry, some to the local Council, some to a Management Company, some to the freeholder (if applicable), some to a previous solicitor (maybe), some to the lender or anyone with a charge on the property, some to a solar panel company (if applicable), etc, etc.  So you can see, that it can take some time sending out to all different places and then receiving responses in a timely manner.

urban469

Got it, thanks!

GoogleMeNow

   

Willis75

Thrugelmir said:

urban469 said:

I wish it was easy to speak to my conveyancer. I send emails and don't get replies. I call and get put through to someone else, then I ask for her to call me back, and instead I get a one line email.

Unfortunately time costs money. Employees would get little productive work done if they had to stop what they were doing to answer an ad-hoc telephone call.  The conveyancers will have many clients. Focussing on those nearing exchange and completion will always be the priority. 

Quite right that time costs money but this particular client is paying money for the conveyancers time.

Whilst I agree that it is counterproductive to continually bombard with phone calls, an odd phone call or email is what you are paying for and the phone calls and emails should be responded to.

And as you can see above that someone has explained the process to the poster, if his conveyancer had actually taken the time to do the same, then the poster would not be worried and would then understand that the conveyancer is doing a good job and would then have no need to bother them.

urban469

Just spoke to my conveyancer! She said they don't start enquiries until the legal report on the contract has been sent to me. I haven't received the legal report yet, and they haven't started enquiries yet. It's been a month since the conveyancer received the draft contract - reasonable amount of time or slow? (Genuine question, not being clever!)

Thrugelmir

Willis75 said:

Thrugelmir said:

urban469 said:

I wish it was easy to speak to my conveyancer. I send emails and don't get replies. I call and get put through to someone else, then I ask for her to call me back, and instead I get a one line email.

Unfortunately time costs money. Employees would get little productive work done if they had to stop what they were doing to answer an ad-hoc telephone call.  The conveyancers will have many clients. Focussing on those nearing exchange and completion will always be the priority. 

Quite right that time costs money but this particular client is paying money for the conveyancers time.

Solicitors will happily charge on a time basis rather than fixed fee.