Contacting seller’s solicitors directly

Millsandovis

in the middle of a house purchase and it’s being held up by the lack of a first registration when the property was last sold. It is a property buying company that I am buying the property from with the cash from my sale. 

after a few weeks of being in the dark and having no response to anything, we have since found out that the issue is simply the solicitors that were used for the sale & didn’t do the FR are not responding to a request for more information from Land Registry. I believe there has been some sort of breakdown of relationship between the old solicitors & the company selling the house. 

My sale is progressing nicely and approaching survey stage, the estate agent for my purchase has said once this is sorted they are looking to complete by the end of June. I can’t see this being realistic when they are still yet to respond to even the first requisition from LR but who knows?! 

Now my question: I have been told the name of solicitors who are not responding to LR. Is it acceptable for me to contact them and ask them to respond as they are holding up the sale? My conveyancer & estate agent have chased the sellers numerous times and LR are due to send their 30 day reminder. Is this a done thing or a big no no? 

Obviously I can wait to see if they reply because I’m not actually ready yet to exchange but just mindful of this issue being bigger than it seems & having to look elsewhere & start the process again and risk my chain.  If they could just reply & acknowledge LR I would feel a lot better about everything! At this stage I don’t know if they just haven’t sent the form off for registration or if there’s deeds missing etc. 

thanks for reading! 

user1977

Millsandovis said:

Now my question: I have been told the name of solicitors who are not responding to LR. Is it acceptable for me to contact them and ask them to respond as they are holding up the sale? My conveyancer & estate agent have chased the sellers numerous times and LR are due to send their 30 day reminder. Is this a done thing or a big no no? 

No. They are not allowed to talk to another solicitor's client, so they can't reply to you anyway. You do any chasing up via your own solicitor (why aren't you?).

pretamang

You're unlikely to get anywhere by contacting them directly, they will only want to deal with your conveyancer which is convention so unfortunately you will be ignored.

I tried this when I was purchasing a few years ago, my conveyancer and estate agent both said that there's no way they will respond to any direct contact.

Millsandovis

user1977 said:

Millsandovis said:

Now my question: I have been told the name of solicitors who are not responding to LR. Is it acceptable for me to contact them and ask them to respond as they are holding up the sale? My conveyancer & estate agent have chased the sellers numerous times and LR are due to send their 30 day reminder. Is this a done thing or a big no no? 

No. They are not allowed to talk to another solicitor's client, so they can't reply to you anyway. You do any chasing up via your own solicitor (why aren't you?).

I have, that’s why I said my conveyancer has chased them numerous times - but still no response - in the text you quoted 

I don’t need them to reply to me, I just need them to reply to land registry. 

DE_612183

there is nothing stopping you trying - however the I would not expect a great deal of success, and you may even annoy your solicitor who may feel like you are undermining them

TheJP

DE_612183 said:

there is nothing stopping you trying - however the I would not expect a great deal of success, and you may even annoy your solicitor who may feel like you are undermining them

Well there is actually, they would need a client reference number, without one they wont get any further than a sorry we cant help you or give you any information.

I agree trying to contact could damage the process further.

Millsandovis

Thanks for the input! I decided to just send the name of the firm to my conveyancer (in case he didn’t know as he’s dealing with a different lot of solicitors - he probably does anyway!) and will get on with my day. 

Just so infuriating waiting for responses especially when there’s a suggestion there’s some sort of fall out behind it. 

Thanks again 

Millsandovis

pretamang said:

You're unlikely to get anywhere by contacting them directly, they will only want to deal with your conveyancer which is convention so unfortunately you will be ignored.

I tried this when I was purchasing a few years ago, my conveyancer and estate agent both said that there's no way they will respond to any direct contact.

Thanks for the anecdotal evidence! Glad I asked now before going ahead with it. Cheers all 

theartfullodger

Only if you wish to turn your solicitor against you.  Your choice.

housebuyer143

I called my sellers solicitor and while they rightfully refused to speak to me, they did then reply to my solicitor so I feel like it was the right call. 
You can really only do it once though because they will tell you they can't talk to you.

Millsandovis

housebuyer143 said:

I called my sellers solicitor and while they rightfully refused to speak to me, they did then reply to my solicitor so I feel like it was the right call. 
You can really only do it once though because they will tell you they can't talk to you.

Yeah this was my thinking behind it. Rather than replying to me it might push them to reply to LR. I think I will use it as a last resort if there’s still no response once my sale is close to exchange. Then I can start looking elsewhere if needed.