Property purchase annoyance

[Charltonstrek]

Hi
Posted before about this it's been a long drawn out purchase that I feel could have been completed within 8 weeks if all involved had thier act together.
Solicitor hasn't been the best not giving updates been dismissive etc etc so now I am getting near the end my solicitor doesn't have the capacity to deal with my file at the moment due to dealing with other clients completions.
Do you think this acceptable or do I need to calm down

This is mad, we bought (cash so chain-free) in the 90s and it took less than a month from offer to us in there. It’s purely down to the solicitors in that situation.

You bought for cash, no lender, a freehold property, thirty years ago? I mean apart from anything else, in our area local authority searches are taking 6-10 weeks to come back.

I know it’s been 18 weeks, I read you OP. You said you though it should be done in 8 weeks and I am telling you that is a wholly unrealistic expectation except in very limited circumstances.

Well I have the forms now so im slowly getting there its not my solicitor in my local branch thats sent them it's somebody in a another branch much further away and they've got to be posted back to this branch

Ours took 10 months from when we instructed to when we completed.
It was a Shared Ownership property. Our buyer was moving from rented to ours. We were moving from ours to my Mums which I inherited when she passed away. Some dreadful mistakes were made, for example the draft Contract and the TR1 had different purchase prices on them and we were asked the same enquiries which we had previously responded to. The management company had responded three times to our solicitor yet he was asking them the same question too! It was diabolical.

They'd also passed our file to a different office and not only had we lost the original solicitors we had been familiar with, but they also opted to pass us on to a 'legal assistant' who was overseeing the transaction. So a lot of mistakes that he made weren't picked up. I get that everyone has to learn and that's fine, but when its something as important as a house sale, that persons work needs to be overseen by someone above them and this wasn't the case.

I used to work in conveyancing and would happily type all my own letters to clients, to the other side, to mortgage lenders, etc but every letter and I mean EVERY letter I produced was put in a tray and read and signed by my boss.

Its around 6 months for conveyancing in the UK I believe at the moment. 8 weeks in a you won't even be off the starting block!

8 weeks is incredibly fast!! Most take 12-16.

Or do it yourself, I've done it 11 times to date!, it's not a difficult process.

Our chain free leasehold purchase took four months ten years ago and we had a leasehold specialist conveyancer not a fixed price estate agent conveyancing house.

You need to calm down and accept house buying is a drawn out stresadul experience or you will drove yourself mad. There isn't a fixed time, it takes the time it takes (although I attribute some grey hairs to the three weeks our lender had a bizarre AML meltdown and refused to accept the source of our deposit was proceeds from a property that was sold the year before despite the conveyancer who acted for us in that sale writing to them with evidence).

The threat of charging you for emails is a strong signal from your conveyancer that you are expecting more service than you are paying for. (And probably pissing them off with too many emails).

Onboarding took 1 month not sure if thats normal

This country has gone backwards in everything

You can’t compare a freehold, cash, chain free sale, three decades ago, to a leasehold purchase with a mortgage.