Mortgage conveyancing

Luke

Luke

Luke

Soldato
Joined
19 Jul 2005
Posts
7,069
Location
S. Yorkshire
Does anyone have any positive experiences of using a mortgage conveyancing company as opposed to a solicitor?
I'm selling my house, and the last two times I've done this, the solicitors I've used have been useless and the sales/purchases have dragged on for up to 6 months. If I can avoid using a solicitor, I'll be far happier!

If anyone has used a conveyancing company and can share their experiences, I'd be very grateful.

Cheers
 
I take it that you had no cause to visit them as they are in York. (Mind you, your current location is Essex, It may well have been York prior to moving!)

Both times in the past, I've had to make visits to the solicitor. Once to drop off urgent paperwork, and once to apply some "pressure" to the retard looking after our case.

Being 200+ miles away from them is a concern for me.
 
I used a conveyancer in Plymouth to buy my place in Surrey. They were awful.

There isn't any difference between an Conveyancer and a Solicitor, it's just rebranding to throw you off the scent and make you think they've entered the 20th Century.

I can't be bothered to go into detail but they misinformed us about documentation and deadlines all the way though and I'm surprised our vendor didn't have a coronary.

As with any trade, go with a local recommendation.
 
When we moved into our house just over a year ago we used a local solicitor.
Firstly it was on recommendation from somebody else and I'll be honest and say they really were excellent.
I didn't actually have to phone up and chase them at all.
When I called them at the beginning they did say they weren't the cheapest around but they felt you get what you paid for.
When we shopped around they were right, we could have saved some money but what value do you place on a company doing the job right?

They kept us informed all the way sending us loads of paperwork all the way through the process.

The other reason we went for a local solicitor was as you said - would we need to call in to sign documents of "hurry them up".
Again, in the end we never had to set foot in their offices as everything was done via mail (never e-mail, well they would send us the odd notification electronically but told us the actual paperwork would arrive shortly).

So as long as you choose a good solicitor you shouldn't need to visit them (so they don't neccessarily need to be on your doorstep).
Also go for recommendation and not price and you probably won't have any problems.
 
a solicitor (full) is trained in all aspects of the law
faimly / criminal / conveyencing / probate (deaths wills)

a conveyencer is a semi-solicitor who only trains in house sales / etc


that make sence

oh an people saying solicitors takes ages. its not the solicitors its the goverment that they have to contact for paper work before they can go any further

an any solicitor / convayencer can be dealing with roughly 200 house sales at any 1 time!

i did 5 years in a solicitors an had to do lots of filing daily
 
Ransom said:
oh an people saying solicitors takes ages. its not the solicitors its the goverment that they have to contact for paper work before they can go any further

an any solicitor / convayencer can be dealing with roughly 200 house sales at any 1 time!

i did 5 years in a solicitors an had to do lots of filing daily
Click to expand...
In the two cases I referred to above, it was the solicitors that were the delay. From making basic clerical errors leading to long delays such as searches being performed on the wrong property, to acting against my specific instructions.
I know there is a large amount of red tape, but that's why we use solicitors. I'd expect them to be efficient about it.

If anyone can recommend any decent solicitors or conveyancing firms in the London area, I'd appreciate it.
 
emailiscrap said:
In the two cases I referred to above, it was the solicitors that were the delay. From making basic clerical errors leading to long delays such as searches being performed on the wrong property, to acting against my specific instructions.

I know there is a large amount of red tape, but that's why we use solicitors. I'd expect them to be efficient about it.
Click to expand...

I can relate to all of that. I generally found my Conveyancer (www.simplyconveyancing.co.uk) to be uncommunicative and prone to basic errors. I told them the date we needed to exchange for two weeks and when the day comes they announce that they didn't have one of the documents required. After many calls and much shouting it turns out they didn't actually need that document to exchange, only for completion which would be a week later.

There is no excuse for incompetence, especially considering the amount they get paid. Hire more clerical staff is the answer.
 
emailiscrap said:
I take it that you had no cause to visit them as they are in York. (Mind you, your current location is Essex, It may well have been York prior to moving!)

Both times in the past, I've had to make visits to the solicitor. Once to drop off urgent paperwork, and once to apply some "pressure" to the retard looking after our case.

Being 200+ miles away from them is a concern for me.
Click to expand...

That is a fair point (both our moves were in Essex) - we haven't had to visit either of our solicitors. That said, Harrowells were excellent with regard to communication - any queries were dealt with via email, with just the legal docs etc needing to be done by post.
 
Your Best bet is to ask around and get a recomendation for a solicitor locally who has done a good job for friends/relatives. I used a firm recomended by a firend who were absolutely brilliant so they now pick up lots more business as I recomend them to other people none of whom have come back complaining. Sadly you can't control who the other party chooses and in the case of my house they chose a bunch of die hard traditionalists who are only just comming to terms with the phone let alone email and they dragged there heels at every turn! Still were in and happy and thats all that counts!
 
Definitely - never felt left out of the loop, always got called back when they promised to and had zero problems. Our conveyancer was Sandra Pejda.

We got put onto them via a deal from my wife's work. They offered a discount for an online conveyancing company (whose name I forget) who then passed us onto Harrowells.
 
Cheers, I've emailed them and I've been told that Sandra will get back to me tomorrow when she returns.

Any other recommendations wouldn't go amiss!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom