Conveyancers/Solicitors choice and househunting

Grizebeck

RHemmings said:

mark_cycling00 said:

Looks like a rebranding of the appalling "DC law" conveyancing company. (Reviews on Google maps for their stockport contact centre)

You really want to avoid saving a few quid but get stuck with call centre ops who never progress your sale, give you duff advice, delay your transaction for months, lose your chain of sale etc. Etc.

Just find a nice local solicitor who has some professional, hard working conveyancers (often mothers on flexible working) who will actually get things done and help you through the purchase 

It's interesting that on Trustpilot, DC Law have a good rating of 4.6. https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.dclaw.co.uk 

Many of the five star reviews name a particular staff member, often very prominently like in the review title. It's always been my suspicion that reviews that mention <NAME> very prominently were written by <NAME> and when there are lots of those, I suspect deliberate manipulation. 

EDIT: DC Law has flagged 264 reviews, 99% of which were negative reviews. Most of those were removed, but mostly because the reviewer didn't respond to Trustpilot when requested. The majority of verified reviews on the website are negative typically 1*. 

They are rubbish.  I had to do something in order to get an amended TR1 form from them to my solicitor.  Agents etc chased. What i did worked but they are just poorly trained people.  The conveyancer they have for our purchase on their side is barely out of uni

EssexHebridean

I work for a solicitors - generally speaking the transactions we have most issues with both pre and post completion are those involving "conveyancing factories" - and even as a client the chances are you would find that you never spoke to the same person once, meaning that on every occasion you do need to speak with someone they first have to familiarise themselves with your file...  Sounds like you have already decided to go with a recommended local firm which is definitely a good call I'd suggest! 

littleteapot

Yes @EssexHebridean I did use the local independent which was recommended to me by a colleague and has good reviews. 

Well it didn't take us long to find the house we want to buy which thankfully has no onward chain, but we are still a total chain of five unfortunately so theres always a high risk of complications or failure. Our offer was accepted next day, mortgage offer came through the day after it was lodged by my broker with no physical survey/valuation on their part. I guess that's because the LTV is under 50% so they decided a desktop valuation was enough. I'll still be getting a proper survey done though as the house is approaching 100 years old.

It all seems too quick and easy so far to be true, so the paranoid side of me is expecting something bad to happen at the last minute and shatter the dream.

EssexHebridean

You will go all the way through the transaction expecting something to happen to make it all come crashing down around your ears, trust me on this, I was there myself just 2 months ago. (I’d say that a fair bit of the drama was shared on my DFW board diary of that time,but equally, I was victim to a huge number of folks sharing house-moving horror stories on there so maybe don’t be tempted to read that… 😆)

It sounds like it’s all going well so far though, so try to keep the faith. Fingers crossed, and good luck. If it helps, as I type I’m sitting in our new house, which we are still utterly in love with, wondering how the heck I ended up living somewhere so fab. For every horror story there are plenty of happy endings too!

littleteapot

Well, the chickens have (probably) come home to roost already.

I had a bad feeling about our buyer's buyer when last week I heard he both 'wants to move quickly' and at the same time asked our buyer to fix some quite frankly non-critical issues (flashing and repointing on the chimney I was told by our agent) that had been found on the survey before proceeding. Anyone who wanted to move quickly would surely re-negotiate the price with the vendor to reflect the cost of these repairs, with the intention of doing them after moving in?

Today I heard that although he hasn't formally pulled out of the purchase of our buyer's property he has instructed his solicitor to do no further work at this time, and been enquiring about properties in nearby towns and villages both with our agent and another one nearby.

In light of this, our agent has recommended that we re-market our house, although communicate to our buyer that if they return to a proceedable position before we find another buyer in a better position (e.g. a FTB or cash buyer) that we can resume with them at the agreed price. I'm not sure what to do in this uncertain position as if the chain is broken our vendor might also decide to pull out. Our vendor (no onward chain) was actually about to take theirs off the market with the intention of updating/repairing it over winter and re-advertising it next spring at a higher price so I fear that if we re-advertise they might decide it better to go with their other plan.

Our buyer is very local to us and downsizing, and has made it clear that they are committed to buying our house, but the problem buyer is moving to this area from another part of the country so is probably just messing around because they have seen other properties in nearby towns and villages that they like and possibly having a change of heart about buying our buyers house.

it's a good job that my GP has recently prescribed some stronger medication for my anxiety, else I would be losing the plot now.