Is it just me or do all the delays with moving house seem to be with solicitors???

We saw ours last week, signed the mortgage deeds and paid the deposit with a view to exchanging this week. Its now Friday and we've just been told that she is still awaiting the results of some searches!. You would have thought that this would have mentioned when we handed over the cash.

Now the vendor is getting increasingly cross, we are getting increasingly stressed and the solicitor doesnt seem to get the sense of urgency.

That feels better - rant over!

It's not always the solicitors - there's also the surveyors. It's now 11 weeks since I agreed the sale on my flat and I'm no closer to exchange. This is largely because it took 8 weeks for the survey to get done on one of the properties in the chain - once it was done, there were problems with the property and thus there is still no end in sight. My solicitor has been pulling his weight but there's not a lot that you can do apart from grind your teeth and watch your knuckles go white with stress...

We recently moved to Scotland, for this you need two solicitors....we used one we'd used for our first buy and one we were refered to by an Estate agent...

A cost use three times what B did, for considerably less work.

B billed us for £1,000,000 at one point.

B made so many typing and basic errors that all their side of the paper work had to be repeated at least once.

B failed to tell anyone they'd fixed a completion date because they did so and then went on holiday for a week.

B wasn't even in the office on the day of our sale.

A ended up steering the process for us, doing all the chasing and without his help the sale would definately have fallen through.

So imo it's not "Solicitors" which slow the process up, or the survey, it's the down to individuals, basically find a good solicitor and stick with him / her and you'll find life gets alot easier, and "good" doesn't mean expensive. Not sure on what the rules here on advertising but if you want his name and company email me on docnerooney@hotmail.com and I'll happily give you his details.

quote:

Originally posted by Roo^:

B billed us for £1,000,000 at one point.

B made so many typing and basic errors that all their side of the paper work had to be repeated at least once.

My solicitor (or more likely: his secretary), in his letter to confirm completion, managed to make 21 spelling mistakes in 5 sentences (and even got the adress wrong)!

Roo, maybe we used the same one, although your solicitor seems more expensive

lol could be... they got our address wrong too :/

The Estate Agency that sold me my house got the post code wrong... I corrected it when my insurance company told me it would be more expensive to insure a flat above a shop... what shop?! :eek

I got the paperwork corrected, I thought, only to have my first mortgage statement sent to the wrong post code... fortunately they had actually mortgaged the right property, otherwise...

house buying is a ridiculously complicated purpose, full of silly and lazy people... solicitors... mortgage companies... estate agents.... vendors... buyers... councils... each can have an impact on the speed (or lack of it) of your property transfer.

Ary.

My last move was with a different Solicitor to the one I have used for years, he was local to the house I was buying, cheaper, and more advanced as it was all trackable online.

He still managed to send me the search results for someone else's house though!

And some of the Emails I got were definatelty not intended for me!!!