Buying a leasehold flat is such a horrible experience.

somerandomusername

To get any question answered requires a chain of like 3 or 4 different people. 

Me > my solicitor > sellers solicitor > seller, then it comes back sellers solicitor > my solicitor > me. God forbid I have a follow up question... 

And sometimes it can even involve a 5th party, the management company. The whole process just seems so ridiculously old school and slow. Like I should just be able to call up the seller and ask them a basic question.

Then there's the delays, management pack delay? I have to contact my solicitor who goes through the contacts who then maybe they respond, if they don't then another follow up, then the reply comes back etc. 

My first purchase fell through due to delays, now my second purchase is 1 month in and I've just found out the seller hasn't even ordered the management pack yet. 

I'm so sick to death of people dragging their knuckles. When I get a document to say, evidence to upload or something that needs doing on my part, I do it the same day, the next day guaranteed. But it seems like I'm the only one capable of doing that. 

Now I've just found out the seller is going on holiday next month... So you're in the middle of trying to sell your home and you !!!!!! on holiday? Great.  

penners324

I sold a leasehold flat 4 years ago. No chain. Conveyancing took 5 months.

subjecttocontract

If you think buying is a horrible experience, just wait until you try to sell.......it gets worse, in my opinion.
One leasehold property I sold took 7 months. If you don't expect anything to happen quickly then you won't be disappointed.

One contributory factor of many that can cause delays is that the management company require paying up front for the info pack. Once paid they have little or no incentive to provide the pack in a timely manner.

MyRealNameToo

somerandomusername said:

To get any question answered requires a chain of like 3 or 4 different people. 

Me > my solicitor > sellers solicitor > seller, then it comes back sellers solicitor > my solicitor > me. God forbid I have a follow up question... 

And sometimes it can even involve a 5th party, the management company. The whole process just seems so ridiculously old school and slow. Like I should just be able to call up the seller and ask them a basic question.

Then there's the delays, management pack delay? I have to contact my solicitor who goes through the contacts who then maybe they respond, if they don't then another follow up, then the reply comes back etc. 

My first purchase fell through due to delays, now my second purchase is 1 month in and I've just found out the seller hasn't even ordered the management pack yet. 

I'm so sick to death of people dragging their knuckles. When I get a document to say, evidence to upload or something that needs doing on my part, I do it the same day, the next day guaranteed. But it seems like I'm the only one capable of doing that. 

Now I've just found out the seller is going on holiday next month... So you're in the middle of trying to sell your home and you !!!!!! on holiday? Great.  

There is no legal requirement to use a solicitor if you dont want to however if you are dependent on a mortgage then your mortgage provider will require the use of a conveyancer in a hope of stopping you doing something stupid or forgetting to check certain elements. 

There is nothing stopping you asking the seller a question directly if you wanted or via the estate agent but its likely the vendor wants the advice of their solicitor on answering and you can't stop them wanting to involve them. 

The problem is that the conveyancing process has become highly commoditised and so its a race to the bottom as people prioritise costs above all else. Having done large commercial deals, including property, it all can be done in a very different way but then when we were having face to face meetings with the counterparty and both sets of solicitors the cost of the meetings were over £10,000 per hour.

EssexHebridean

You absolutely can just speak with the seller and ask questions - what you can’t do then though is place any sort of legal reliance on the answers. For basic stuff which wasn’t part of the legal process we were chatting with the sellers throughout - and that relationship can be hugely helpful for problems that arise during the transaction too. When our sellers agents lied to us about the sellers considering remarketing, being able to contact the sellers directly and say “is this actually the case” and be reassured that it certainly wasn’t (and that they were VERY unimpressed with the agents for saying it!) was fantastic.

Leaseholds are more complex simply because there are more parties involved - at the least a freeholder, and often a management company as well. It’s necessary to get things in writing to safeguard YOU - so that in the future those things are in black and white and can be referred back to. What would you rather though - for the process to take a few weeks longer now, or to discover in a few years that there is a significant issue with the lease, or that the service charges are not as you were expecting, and budgeting for? 

All that said, it doesn’t necessarily have to take too long - as a counterpart to the comments above, our leasehold flat sale a couple of years ago was done and dusted in 14 weeks. Would have been quicker still if the freeholder hadn’t faffed for a fortnight with the management pack. That said, they did leave us in a position after sale that we weren’t responsible for any additional service charges past the date we completed on the sale, so we aren’t knocking them too much! (Yes, it was an error, but our solicitor made sure they were absolutely tied to it so there could be no comeback!)

eddddy

somerandomusername said:

To get any question answered requires a chain of like 3 or 4 different people. 

Me > my solicitor > sellers solicitor > seller, then it comes back sellers solicitor > my solicitor > me. God forbid I have a follow up question... 
  

Depending on the questions, you should probably be using the estate agent for a lot of this.

This is the type of thing the estate agent is paid 1% or 1.5% of the selling price to do - it's called "sales progression"

Typically...
- you phone the estate agent > the estate agent phones the seller > the estate agent phones you back.
- on a good day, you might get the answer within 15 minutes

If appropriate, you can then pass the answer on to your solicitor to take steps to get it included in the contract. And the seller can also pass the answer to their solicitor.



For example, you ask via the Estate Agent "My offer assumed that the cooker was included,  but it's not shown on the fixtures and fittings form."

Assuming you get confirmation in a call-back 15 minutes later, you then email your solicitor to say "The seller has confirmed that the cooker is included, please arrange to get this reflected in the contract."

And the process would be even more streamlined if the estate agent tells the seller to proactively pass the same info on to their solicitor.


Or if the seller replies "No the cooker isn't included", you can then ask follow-up questions and/or argue via the estate agent - with each "back-and-forth" taking minutes rather than weeks. Plus the estate agent is likely to be an experienced negotiator, who will be working hard to negotiate a solution, so that they get their fee.

Whereas a solicitor would probably just send a 'bland' email, and then tell you the answer is "no" and leave it at that. (And not want to waste their time arguing about a cooker).

Chief_of_Staffy

It's not just solicitors, it's basically everyone. The proportion of people willing or able to do their jobs these days is way down in the single percentage points.

My solicitors when I recently sold / bought were quite responsive, yet appeared unable to undertake simple tasks. The buyer's solicitor, it appeared, was flat out incompetent. So it resulted in similar experiences -

* Buyer's solicitor sends demand for indemnity insurance for private road at the rear.
* My solicitor accepts this, sources a policy and sends it to me with a request to sign and pay £129
* I reply saying that as I've explained twice, and as per public record, the road is adopted and has been for 25 years. I link to the council records and map.
* My solicitor sends this back to the buyer's solicitor.
[a few weeks laterrrrr...]
* Buyer's solicitor sends demand for indemnity insurance for private road at the rear.
* My solicitor accepts this, sources a policy and sends it to me with a request to sign and pay £129.
* I reply saying that as I've explained three times, and as per public record, the road is adopted and has been for 25 years. I link to the council records and map, copy all the data into the email and also phone the council as a triple-check, and include the person I spoke to as a contact.
* My solicitor sends this back to the buyer's solicitor.
[a few days laterrrrr...]
* I phone and ask my solicitor how things are progressing.
* All in order, she replies. We're just waiting on you signing the indemnity insurance for the private road. I explain for the fifth time that such a thing is not required. My solicitor replies, "Don't worry about it, then, the search was probably wrong."

BTW it will be their heels they're dragging, not their knuckles. Although maybe both.

Chemistry777

The solicitor recommended to us by the EA, had a standard cost. but also had an expedited service cost.  So they were literally telling us they would not necessarily turn things around quickly.  We went elsewhere but often wonder if I had paid the £400 extra, would it have gone better/faster.

MyRealNameToo

Chemistry777 said:

The solicitor recommended to us by the EA, had a standard cost. but also had an expedited service cost.  So they were literally telling us they would not necessarily turn things around quickly.  We went elsewhere but often wonder if I had paid the £400 extra, would it have gone better/faster.

The problem is your fee can only accelerate how quickly your solicitor acts, you may find the other side's solicitor has an option to save £400 on the acceptance that other customers will be responded to ahead of you in which case the net impact is probably an overall worse experience than if both of you had bought the standard service. 

BungalowBel

penners324 said:

I sold a leasehold flat 4 years ago. No chain. Conveyancing took 5 months.

Agreed.  We sold one September 2024.  No chain.  Conveyancing six months.

Albermarle

Depending on the questions, you should probably be using the estate agent for a lot of this.

This is the type of thing the estate agent is paid 1% or 1.5% of the selling price to do - it's called "sales progression"

When a family member bought a house recently, the Vendors EA had someone specifically to do this job of sales progression. It helped a lot in getting quick answers to non legal questions.