Estate agent trying to push along our conveyancer

[Fafalle]

We had an offer accepted about 3 weeks ago. We are buying only and it will be cash - a lot of the money is from an inheritance - so I know the solicitor has to do source of funds checks etc but they assure me they can do it alongside the usual conveyancing stuff, it won't add much time.

We paid a few hundred to our solicitor a while ago on account. I had a call from the estate agent today and she's trying to suggest that we are taking too long and it's time to pay for searches. I spoke to the solicitor and they said they are waiting for details from the seller's solicitor, then it is time to start searches. They said it is really not up to the EA to dictate this, which makes sense. It's a legal matter.

I asked about getting a survey, again my solicitor advises me to wait a bit.

The solicitor seems quite confident about getting to completion in August, which is what I had suggested. I questioned the EA and she didn't seem to know what date would suit the seller, but she was quite pushy?

I am quite suspicious that the EA is just pushing for their commission, as we have no information on what the seller wants. Solicitor advises me to not get into a back and forth with the agents, but I did promise to get back to the EA. What do you think I should say? I thought I might say we are committed to the purchase and the solicitors are confident it's all going ahead.

I don't really know what the stages are of the conveyancing process. Thanks for any insight you could give me.

Solicitor should be on with searches as soon as memorandum of sale is received from the EA.
survey, get on with it.
Your solicitor should be communicating with their solicitor. The EA shouldn’t have much purpose now other than chasing if things aren’t progressing.

Solicitors can be very slow.

it’s common for EAs to stay involved and keep pushing the process along.

solicitors are always confident the legal stuff will be done in time until it isn’t.

the EA as the person who can speak to both sides is in a good position to push things along. If the seller forgets to fill in a form or loses an email from the solicitor in their spam folder then the EA can chase it up.

If it were my house you were buying, I'd accepted your offer three weeks ago and you'd done nothing about arranging a survey, I would be wondering if you were serious. I don't understand what there is to wait for? The survey is how you check the structure of the house to make sure there's nothing alarming that makes you want to either pull out or renegotiate the price.

Strategically quite a bit wrong with your comments - it's not in the OPs interest for searches to be ordered as soon as memorandum of sale is issued, the sellers may never go on to issue a contract pack and that's £300 lost for the OP unnecessarily. Never order them before proactive engagement from the sellers solicitor to their solicitor.

If they haven't had a contract pack yet then absolutely no rush to incur the cost of searches, most come back quickly and will slot in fine. Otherwise it's just increasing costs for the OP that she may go on to lose.

EA does likely need to butt out though, either they need to be chasing their client and their solicitor or your solicitor directly.

Sounds to me like your solicitor is doing fine and has it all managed

Yes I think it was the contract pack that our solicitor is waiting for. That's what the solicitor says about we shouldn't start incurring costs until that stage?

“Strategy” depends on priorities.

If you don’t proceed you can sell on the searches.

As a chain free cash buyer this should all be on OPs terms and the seller is bonkers not to proceed or to risk OP pulling out. OP should be pushing and proactive.

August is quite a long wait for a cash purchase. Does the agent know of this? The agent is probably pushing the other side too. Of course it’s not gut ty to dictate the schedule but if the agent is getting pressure from his seller maybe your solicitor needs to ask their solicitor why there’s a delay.

Part of an EA’s role is progressing the sale, not just marketing the property. And you being a cash buyer and theoretically speedy would have been a consideration in having your offer accepted.

Solicitors rarely show signs of urgency.

I would have commissioned a survey as soon as the offer was accepted, and commissioned searches the day I was happy with the survey.

If your solicitor is waiting on info from your vendor, tell the EA that.

Yes our solicitors have not received the contract pack, although it will be soon I am told. So it is the sellers side that are slow? The solicitor says she needs to see the contract pack to know what kind of searches to do, and it's the usual procedure to do it that way round. I've googled and that supports her stance.

I asked the solicitor about doing a survey but she also advises to wait on that. I am thinking though that I could at least get one booked in? I am sure this house is going to be fine, it is only 10 years old, built by a very reputable local builder, and the sellers seem to be decent people.

Maybe I will tell the solicitor we are doing that, might quieten down the estate agent. We already gave the solicitor a few hundred on account, I told the agent that, and that we're very keen.

The EA don't seem to have any idea of when the seller wants to complete though 'oh it's too early to say'. If that's the case, why are you pushing so much? Makes me suspicious they are just trying to get commission ASAP. There is a short chain too, and we're at the bottom of it obviously.

Remember, the estate agent is working for the seller, not for you. I wouldn't rely on what she says. Yes of course she is pushing for her commission ASAP. If you are feeling pressured by her, don't take her calls and listen to the voicemail later. Three weeks is not a long time.

With my recent purchase I used the EA to try and get responses from the seller's solicitor when she was delaying things. Other than that, I relied on my solicitor or his paralegal to find out what was happening.

No, just no. I am a Conveyancer. We would never advise a client to carry out searches until the contract pack is received for the reasons another commenter has said and also because until the contract is received you do not know the full extent of the land being sold. It may transpire there are two titles etc. You don’t simply give the search provider an address, you have to confirm the extent of the land, which you cannot do without it being confirmed in the contract pack. If the searches are carried out on incorrect/full extent of land they will have to be done again, adding more cost and time.

Any good lawyer would also not accept ‘sold on’ searches. Most searches now are personal searches and insurance backed, the insurance being between the original firm that ordered the searches and the search company.

I would also not instruct a survey until I had seen the property information form completed by the seller, which forms part of the contract pack.

In short, your lawyer works for you. The agent works for the seller (and is not a lawyer and does not know the in depth process!!). Your lawyer is correct and you should not incur any third party costs until the contract is received.

What you could be doing now, in order to save time later, is start to gather all of your source of funds. Gather bank statements (these have to show your name and address and cannot be screen prints, you may need to apply to the bank for these), documentation regarding the inheritance including a copy of the will and any correspondence from the executor. You will also need to show the bank statement showing the receipt of the inheritance funds. Start gathering all of this now as it will save you time.

In short, the agent is asking you so show a sign of commitment, which you have done by engaging a lawyer and paying monies on account. The seller now must show their sign of commitment by instructing their lawyer to issue the contract pack to your lawyer.

Dont be pushed by the agent.

Yes this.if you're doing a survey then get on with it.

Thanks, @PomPomSugar , you've really set my mind at rest! We've already provided a lot of the info for the source of funds check, actually, and the solicitor said they can do it at the same time as the other conveyancing stuff.

My solicitor ordered searches on receipt of memo of sale and I arranged survey immediately too