Help regarding conveyancing / house purchase...

slunge

slunge

slunge

Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2006
Posts
107
Hey, in the process of trying to buy a new property (much like the rest of the UK trying to complete before March 31st.... nightmare, although its a new build and we are not in a chain).

We placed an offer over 2 weeks ago, and engaged a conveyancing firm 2 weeks ago today. At the moment we have had no progress whatsoever (all paperwork and forms are back and completed by us, and our mortgage broker is well down the line for having offer complete).

As it stands no searches have been requested by our solicitor (we have asked when this can happen and sellers solicitor is also querying) - our firm is saying that they will not request any searches untill they receive the T1 Land Registry form and draft contract from the vendor.

We are just trying to understand where this is being stalled - we had 10 weeks at the start and was hoping to see some movement. Can/should our solicitor be pushing ahead or is this T1 form a hard stop until its sent over?

Not being familiar with the process we have no clue about what steps are involved, and how long each of these may conceivably take.

Despite constant harassment of both our solicitor and the estate agents, we are still totally in the dark.. Any feedback or guides on conveyancing steps would be really helpful.
 
In my honest opinion i very much doubt you would be able to complete before 31st March even if you were not in a chain if you only started the process 2 weeks ago.
 
Agreed, I would've expected your solicitor to have been honest about it not happening before the deadline. We had a relatively smooth ride for ours (no chain) but still have only just exchanged, 12 weeks after initial offer.
 
In my experience of my first purchase that fell through, the solicitors took literally weeks to months between any significant updates, searches, paperwork signing etc. 2 weeks is still pretty much at the initial point of contact.
 
happy_2008 said:
In my honest opinion i very much doubt you would be able to complete before 31st March even if you were not in a chain if you only started the process 2 weeks ago.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this.

Unless you're paying to have your purchase fast tracked, you're going to be on the pile just like everyone else. I suspect that your conveyancer will be dealing with clients who'd made offers before Christmas and will be rushing to get them done and dusted by the deadline. They're not going to drop other clients for someone who's only just joined the race.

I do agree though, poor show from the solicitor, they should have at least set a realistic expectation that it would be unlikely, so you don't get your hopes up.
 
They need the Contract/Tr1/title documents to be able to request the searches so your harrasment towards your solicitor is misguided. It should be directed towards the agent/developer as it is the developers solicitor who needs to provide it.

Your solicitor cannot do anything without that.

You are also unlikely to meet the deadline at this point and if be very surprised if they didn't say that, most firms have been since the start of the year of not before Christmas.
 
Skillmister said:
They need the Contract/Tr1/title documents to be able to request the searches so your harrasment towards your solicitor is misguided. It should be directed towards the agent/developer as it is the developers solicitor who needs to provide it.

Your solicitor cannot do anything without that.

You are also unlikely to meet the deadline at this point and if be very surprised if they didn't say that, most firms have been since the start of the year of not before Christmas.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much the info I was looking for - thankyou.
Its not a case of harassment - more so just wanted to understand where the block currently lies, as for example the vendors solicitor is suggesting its ridiculous that we (us and solicitor) are not performing local authority searches (and without knowing underlying requirements, its hard respond back via the estate agent).

I had no illusions about deadlines when going down this route and did initially discuss this - no solicitor in their right mind would suggest anything is 100% possible, however they did suggest the possibility was there given the circumstances around purchase and as a result we took a punt on it with a view that we would have to pull out should it not be possible.

Unfortunately we will lose up front fees when we inevitably may have to pull out (however it will cost 15k to proceed after the 31st vs maybe 1k to pull out which is unfortunate but seems to be the cost of taking a run at it).
 
No realistic chance of completing before 31st March sadly.

Your best bet is to constantly nag both sides but even with that you won't be completing before 31st March in the current climate.
 
Just checked my email - I started conveyancing on 24/01 and was in the house by 25/03. It is tight but not totally impossible.

Edit: For what its worth I had all of the same comments you have had in this thread. My conveyancer wasn't exactly brilliant, it was a commodity/volume based firm who just clicked through a workflow. Had a few blips with a "progressor" who did a crap job and lied to me about drainage being sorted, but other than that, all pretty plain sailing.
 
We made an offer in November and agreed sale in October and still haven't exchanged either.

Basically there's been a mini boom and the solicitors are all struggling to beat the March 31st deadline, cause that's what everyone wants.
 
Before Covid, it was possible to do this sort of purchase in 4 weeks from start to finish with searches being the biggest bottleneck if everyone is on the same page.

What’s the reason they need those forms to start the searches? Most if not all of them will be just the standard ones on a new build.

The real issue is likely that solicitors across the transaction were not on the same page in terms of deadlines when they took the work on. That said there is a budget coming up so all might not be lost.

I’d the stamp duty really making that big of a difference to your ability to complete the transaction e.g. you can’t take a bit more mortgage?
 
Last edited:
dLockers said:
Just checked my email - I started conveyancing on 24/01 and was in the house by 25/03. It is tight but not totally impossible.
Click to expand...

In any other year the timescales would be fine, in 2021 it's not going to be possible. Every solicitor at the moment is completely swamped with so many more cases than usual (even compared with busy periods), all requesting "we must complete before the end of March". In reality a few of the cases that got in early (Oct-Dec 20) and are simple / no issues will get through. I can't see anything that started in 2021 getting through before the deadline unless it was a super unusual situation (previous sale had fallen through, all paperwork nearly completed already, no searches required, no mortgage required etc....).
 
Peerzy - any idea what is happening with auction conveyancing? Ive looked at a few recently and there is still the 4 week completion clause on most of them. I wonder how people are getting that done in time at the moment (perhaps they are not and the clause is not being held up at the moment).

I am used to completing inside 4 weeks when you have to, i bought our current (home) house in about that timeframe. I guess i got lucky with the vendors and avoided any complications. By contrast i think we are into about month 20 on my current ongoing purchase/saga so of course every case is different, but this isnt the conveyancers causing the delay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom