DH chasing solicitor constantly, I think we leave them alone to do their job!

[Uglyducklingswan]

We are selling a property, and solicitors are doing their job fine I feel. It’s slow but these things always are! However, DH is very impatient and wants it done yesterday, so he is chasing them daily with emails, calls etc.

YABU - (DH is right) solicitor needs chasing or they forget you and go slow
YANBU - (you are right) Leave them alone - solicitor will get the job done quicker if they don’t have to deal with DH’s messages

Daily - too often

However my experience was if you don't chase at all, nothing happens.

You need to meet somewhere in the middle.

Daily is ridiculous - every time they have to stop and check where they’re at with your property it’s time they haven’t then got to actually progress on your property.

Depending on where you are with the sale a fortnightly check in is fine.

I’d only expect to be speaking with a solicitor daily if there was something going wrong with the sale.

Daily is bonkers but I agree with a previous poster that not chasing at all and leaving them to it is also bonkers and in my experience without any chasing at all nothing will get done.

I'd be checking in every 10ish days to make sure it's all ticking along nicely.

They do need chasing. It shouldn't be like that but it is. After our last house purchase we have decided that next time we will insist on, and put in writing, that they will at the very least provide weekly updates to us. Also need to ask, in writing, as we did this last time, what happens if the named solicitor is off sick, do they have holidays booked during this time etc, as in the past we have learned to our cost that in these cases the file just sits on the absent person's desk till they return. The whole conveyancing system is in dire need of updating though.

Daily might be a bit to frequently in general, but if there is specific hold up then yes, also alternate chasing them with the estate agents. When we came to the end of one of our sale/purchase DH chased constantly, I swear it was the only thing that got us over the line.

I'd say chase at least once a week.

Daily chasing is insane.. but weekly definitely needed to keep you in mind. We've been dealing with a solicitor recently and we kept falling off the bottom of her to-do list, leading to a set of forms sitting on her desk for 4 weeks before she submitted them.

Daily will just rack up the charges to you. But never 'leave them to get on with the job'.
A family member did this earlier this year. Offered full asking price, first time buyer, no mortgage, no onward chain in March. Nothing had happen by August. I had been gently suggesting they got a bit annoyed but they are a very gentle soul. In the ended I drafted an annoyed email on their behalf and they sent a version of it. Miraculously, suddenly things started happening that week. Still won't be in before October. Eight months for an absolutely hassle free sale is ridiculous. You need to keep tabs on people who are supposed to be working on your behalf.

I've found with all house purchases and sales we've done, the only time solicitors so anything is when you chase them. We would wait a couple weeks for something that should have been very quick, and then miraculously they do it within the few hours after you've phoned them. I found email chasers pointless, phoning was what got the job done. Daily is OTT as others have said. But if you just leave them to it, nothing will get done.
My DH sounds a bit like yours, and I used to cringe at first when he wanted to chase things up all the time. But as time has gone on I realised he was right, you literally cannot just assume the solicitors will get on and do their job.

You're paying them a lot of money. They should be able to put up with a bit of chasing! They might move a bit quicker just to get him off their back!

They do need chasing. Depending on the point of sale sometimes that's weekly sometimes it's daily.

They r usually quite slow and need chasing. Not daily but definitely weekly.

I would chase but not daily. In my house moves I have always been surprised how slow solicitors are. Estate agents have a bad reputation but they do help you push things forward. Solicitors just sit on things until you chase them.

They do need chasing. We left it a couple of weeks before contacting them after the initial offer was accepted and discovered that absolutely nothing had been done by solicitors on either side. The person who had (bizarrely) been allocated ours was on holiday for two weeks. This was in Scotland, the vendor had nothing to sell and we had a date of entry of 6 weeks, so the had to cram everything into 4 weeks. My solicitor actually asked me if they could contact the other solicitor to request a change in entry date. I said absolutely not.

We had to be constantly on top of our useless conveyancer - he was not doing his job properly and it caused us no end of stress and meant we were spending time chasing down answers directly with other companies ourselves. Daily might be a bit much but a couple of times a week is perfectly fine, daily also fine if you’re waiting for something to come back and they aren’t proactive at letting you know about things.

sitting back and sending an email every ten days isn’t going to get you anywhere. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

They need chasing. Constantly. Depressing and infuriating as it is. You'd expect a professional to be, well, professional. They are not, they're pisstakers.

I think our purchase would have fallen through if we hadn't been in touch with the seller directly and pushed both ours and theirs along.

Daily is a bit OTT but my dh is impatient too and it drives me crackers! Could you try and compromise with every other day? It’s what I do with my dh

They will do nothing unless chased - mainly because other people are chasing them so you will drop to the bottom of the pile.
Although if you do chase then they will try and charge you extra to expedite.
Also don't forget to check the figures - arithmetic isn't their strong point although they will probably charge you to make a correction.

The problem is they can often have between 70-100 properties to deal with all with various different things going on at various stages.

I would say chase them weekly, but daily is just going to get him put to the bottom of the list everytime.

Daily is probably OTT but they need chasing and often the one shouting loudest gets heard and dealt with.

Unless you have a fixed price, you do realise solicitors charge for every 6 mins or part thereof that they spend on your "job". That includes answering phone calls and responding to emails. Maybe check in on where the bill currently sits if he's bothering them daily and you haven't been given a fixed price.

Yes to chasing
No to chasing daily

Are you sue your enot getting charged for the daily calls and emails?

A good solicitor will get on with their job promptly without needing to be chased.

A bad/overworked solicitor will not, and needs chasing constantly.

Most solicitors who do residential work are overworked and I have never met one who is good. It’s very low profit work so only done by solicitors who can’t get better work.

That said if you are not on fixed fee, constant chasing will drive up the cost considerably. If you are on fixed fee go nuts chase all the time.

Good point, I need to check whether he’s pushing the bill up by calling them and taking extra time.
thanks all, I think once a week is reasonable.

Chasing daily is only slowing them down and they're stopping what they're doing to answer the phone/respond to the email.

There are lots of things that solicitors need to wait on, and they can't control those things.

You should be provided with a 'what we're waiting on' every couple of weeks or so - or sooner if you're nearing exchange.

I'd chase weekly at most.