AIBU to feel like an idiot? Buying a house

[SillyNameChanger]

FTB here. Name-changed because I feel so embarrassed, but long-time lurker. I am an intelligent woman usually but this house-buying process is breaking me. I keep crying from frustration.

I can never get my solicitor on the phone. Emails get answered, but not adequately. If I don't understand something and ask for clarification, I get a reply days later. I am frustrated and have never in my life felt so stupid. They are online, there's a portal to log in to and it's all very slick. They were recommended by the estate agent and I've regretted listening to them every since.

So far I think I have completed and sent back everything that they need to exchange, but apparently a couple of docs that I sent last week have gone missing in the post.

On the portal I have 2 outstanding actions:
Please return your signed mortgage
Please return your signed contract

However, I have an email from the solicitor confirming receipt of the mortgage deed, which I posted a month ago. It was the contract and a questionnaire that has gone missing. I don't understand what the signed mortgage is, if not the mortgage deed?

I have combed through my emails and the mortgage deed was the only thing that they sent through for me to sign.

They are not taking my calls and not answering my emails and I am constantly on the verge of tears. I feel so stupid. I kept calling yesterday but it was just going straight to voicemail.

Can anyone who has been through this throw some light on what the hell they want from me and also maybe why they are behaving like this? Is this normal??

Is it Dezrez solicitors?
If so I found them ok but there was sometimes a bit of a lag between submitting docs and them being acknowledged but we got there in the end and overall experience was ok when all was said and done.

Sorry - you'll have learned a lesson here. Never use the estate agent's recommended solicitor. They're recommended because of the kickback, not for being good.

No help to you now, but I always use a solicitor of my choice, and a local one as well, so you can actually go and speak to them. Hope you get it sorted.

Op are you using e-way?

My crappy solicitor uses this too It's SHIT, no end of stuff has got lost

I feel your pain

longearedbat

No help to you now, but I always use a solicitor of my choice, and a local one as well, so you can actually go and speak to them. Hope you get it sorted.

I cannot tell you how much I wish we had done this

I don't want to say the name unless it gets picked up, but it's not either of the two mentioned. I feel alarmed that there are so many bad ones around which sound similar to each other!

You could switch to local solicitor, they are often much easier to reach and will also have good working relationships with local estate agents. I used to work for an online only solicitors, total shit show! Moved to an older more established firm and whilst things can obviously still go wrong, the whole place is a lot more client focused. Good luck OP it sounds stressful.

Use it as a lesson learnt. There are loads of things we would do differently. Luckily we had a solicitor who we knew so didn’t use the one recommended by the estate agent but we did use the mortgage broker recommended to us by them and we signed into one of the worst mortgages. After 5 years we hadn’t paid anything off the mortgage. 3 years with the new mortgage we changed to and we have made quite a dent, taken the term down and lower payment. We didn’t understand it when we first got a mortgage!

You’ll get there in the end, it just takes a while

I’m on my 5th house. The first three solicitors were all like that. It’s fairly normal. IME.
Buying houses requires the patience and tolerance of a very saintly saint.

Oh and of you do choose to switch, ask about any fees payable for work in progress etc and get your file from them so the new solicitors can hit the ground running.

Starlive23

You could switch to local solicitor

I'm not sure if it's too late now - we were supposed to have exchanged yesterday! At which point they noticed that they didn't have everything they needed.

My guess is that they have a huge workload what with being remote, and just don't dedicate enough time to each client?

Sadly this is all too common, not just when using the EA recommended solicitor but using any solicitor. Conveyancing is very repetitive and boring work so tends to get left to the most junior or incompetent person in the office as they are the only ones that will put up with it. A senior person only checks things over when exchange is imminent,and that’s why problems come to light at the last minute.

namechangeninjaevervigilant

A senior person only checks things over when exchange is imminent,and that’s why problems come to light at the last minute.

Well that explains a lot!

I asked to complete as soon as possible after exchange as we are keen to move in (house is chain free) and they just gave a vague "we'll see what we can do" – any ideas about how soon it can happen? EA said 5 working days.

As a side note, the EA has turned out to be a lovely, helpful person so far.

You can exchange and complete same day. It’s your mortgage company that might hold things up. If you are using a mortgage broker see if they can have things in place as soon as possible, if not whomever you have been dealing with at the bank.

We exchanged and completed on the same day. Keep calling, my last solicitor was great (a colleague's DM).The one before on a previous purchase was a shit show, exactly the same online only so distance, recommended by estate agent, said I hadn't sent things I had. Except I had proof of postage (signed for), when I told them that and asked to make a formal complaint as it had taken seven months up to that point for me to buy the flat I was living in and renting, no chain anywhere, it suddenly was miraculously sorted in a week. If you've already exchanged you should've already set a date for completion?

Is it your mortgage offer that’s outstanding if it’s not your deed? So you have a broker? They can chase it up for you, that’s my job (I work for several brokers).

Premier property lawyers? Nightmare until I started down thier complaints procedure and suddenly they couldn't be more helpful. I found the lack of communication and explanation frustrating in the extreme and I've brought and sold lots of house

When we brought our first house, we used an independent solicitor and things still dragged on.

I would email and ask that they call you ASAP to discuss the purchase and once you have them on the phone be polite but stern and tell them that you want to be completed and exchanged by x date (obviously pick a suitable date)

I wanted to be in our house for Christmas and at points it didn’t look like this was going to happen.

Unfortunately when buying a house solicitors don’t move as quickly as you would like them to. That’s pretty standard.
I know it’s frustrating, but you have to remember, although your house sale / purchase if your main priority, it’s not there’s, it will be a teeny tiny percentage of their total workload.

Another vote for smaller, local solicitors or at least a recommendation from someone who isn't pocketing an 'introduction' bonus.

Probably too late for this time but when you move, ask about good local firms for when you need someone in the future. Every house we have bought and the probates I've managed have had problems - decent solicitors with human beings to talk to are life savers in that situation.

They get in juniors to do the leg work

To then they just ask for x then when they get that ask for y - hence huge delay and goes to someone senior at the end

Proper solicitors do it much quicker

There’s no guarantee it’ll be better with an independent solicitor. The last one I used had me tearing my hair out. They all seem to be equally useless.

Ugh my buyer some years ago had solicitors like this - I ended up paying half his fees as a bribe for him to move to my decent, local solicitors, to get things completed. I recently had to use Optima Legal to remortgage my place and get deeds in my sole name, at the insistence of the bank I mortgaged with, and they were another online only, shiny portal, fucking useless company.

Pipandmum

You can exchange and complete same day.

Ooh really?! I'll see about trying to push this then!

We are not using a broker so hopefully that will be ok.

TheHandsOfNeilBuchanan

Not exchanged yet, we were supposed to yesterday but they student noticed that the post had gone awry. It's funny, my Christmas cards never go missing and the other stuff I posted to them using first class got through without any issues... Sigh.

2ndAugust

Is it your mortgage offer that’s outstanding if it’s not your deed? So you have a broker? They can chase it up for you, that’s my job (I work for several brokers).

No, we used a back and they've had the mortgage offer for weeks and weeks.

Gamble66

Nope, not them either! I might come back and tell the name when it's all done.

I will never, ever use an online solicitor again. It was an absolute shambles. I chased them to get the missives back to the seller’s solicitor and was told they had been too busy and I should remember I wasn’t their only client.

The second time we used one, we had to prove our identity by sending in certified copies of various documents. To do so was going to cost us 600 quid. Fortunately their head office was only an hour away so we were able to do it in person.