Solicitor not returning calls re. exchanging contracts - what can we do?

[Olihan]

We were supposed to be exchanging contracts every day so far this week. It's being held up by our buyers' solicitor who isn't returning any phone calls. Our solicitor, our estate agent and our buyers have all tried and his secretary has taken messages that he hasn't responded to.

Is there anything else we can do? Our solicitor is saying he can't do anything more than he is doing, we don't have any direct contact with our buyers and dh is phoning the estate agents and solicitor every hour to chase them but still no joy.

We're supposed to be moving next friday, the packers should be coming on wednesday, pils should be having the dcs overnight on thurs and this a**ehole is holding everything up .

Please, someone give me a solution before my head explodes with the stress!

Assuming the solicitor in question isn't a one man band, ask your solicitor to phone someone else in his/her firm, preferably the senior partner. Obviously, that won't work if the person in question is the senior partner.

We had a similar problem when we bought our house: our seller's solicitor had no sense of urgency - neither did our seller for that matter - to the extent that dh ignored the rules and rang the chap himself to try to put a rocket under him (I was sat in my office in tears with the stress at that point).

Oh Oli - it's crappy when it's so near to the end

we should be completing on the 14th may and hope to exchange very soon

No advice (sorry)

are you moving far?

Conveyancing isnt really my area but I would suggest htat your solicitor writes a very strongly worded letter to the senior partner

in litigation, we say that unles they respond by X we will make an application to court and they will pay the costs, but its not the same with houses

I would jump up and down a bit more though

Can you ask the estate agent to pass your contact phone number onto the buyers so they can contact you directly to discuss. Then hopefully you can talk to them to explain and hopefully they can contact their solicitor who may be more open to talking with their client? Good luck, we are in a similar situation with our own solicitor. We have gone to the senior partner now and seem to be getting more comunication now at last.

Commiserations
We are also meant to be exchanging contracts any day now - all of last week we thought it was us holding things up - but we went through everything with our solicitor this morning and it turns out that our buyer's solicitor hasn't replied to his last letter from over a week ago so in fact, our buyers, who have been demanding to exchange, have been the hold up.
We've now had to move the completion date to mid May, as dh will be abroad on a business trip for early May, but the people we are buying from have already packed their stuff and are putting it into storage and are saying that they have to move sooner as they are living with the bare minimum in their house. So stressful.
Wish I had a solution for you!

I doubt the senior partner would be working on run of the mill conveyancing unless it's a one man band.

Mention the fact that you are in fact paying for a service and don't seem to be receiving it and if he doesn't call you back within two days you will call the Law Society for advice.

That should do it.

But Olihan isn't paying the buyer's solicitor (or have I missed something). And I would expect the estate agent would have contacted the buyer direct and told them to get their solicitor moving (my estate agent did this to me last week, which is why we were convinced that we were the weak link).
Could buyer threaten to not pay all of solicitor's fee/take business elsewhere???

oops, missed that bit about it being the buyer's solicitor! sorry

Your solicitor should speak and complain to the senior partner at the buyers' solicitor (unless they're a one man operation, which won't take you any further). If your solicitor isn't willing to do this, I'm complain to his senior partner. I'd do it first thing tomorrow and, if you have no joy by the end of the day take the matter to the Law Society.

Keep hassling your solicitor. In the end he should do something just to get you off his back, if nothing else.

We had exactly this problem last year and resolved it this way.

Where is the firm based, is it local to your buyers? I would tell the estate agents to tell the buyers to get round there pronto and find out what's going on.

Are you buying another place, if so I assume you haven't exchange on that yet either?

Sympathies - we were meant to exchange last week and in the end couldn't because the court order forcing our sellers' seller to exchange wasn't typed quickly enough and hadn't arrived with the solicitor before 5 p.m. Fingers crossed we complete Monday morning (before sellers' seller gets a chance to appeal) as we are aiming for completion on Thursday

We had this situation once when in a long chain. The only answer is to go the the solicitors and refuse to leave until they have exchanged/shown that they are taking part in an exchange or can give good reason why not. If you aren't available, suggest employing a smelly tramp to sit it out for you!

Thanks for all your advice everyone, sorry for notgetting back to you sooner - had 3 ill children over the w/e so no MN for me!!

Well, it appears the buyer solicitor hasn't done everything he needs to in order to exchange , hence the ignoring of phone calls on Friday.

He told our solicitor a HUGE lie about the first house in the chain being leasehold and needing more documentation, which was fairly swiftly shown to be a lie by the estate agents who phoned them to check.

Can't believe what a tosser this bloke is.

If he's not got his act in gear by tomorrow I am seriously considering taking all 3 dcs to his office and sitting there - that'll get him moving.

Unfortunately as he's not our solicitor I don't think he'll speak to us anyway, and he was avoiding calls from his own clients, so they're as helpless as us.

I'm going to write a letter of complaint to the Senior Partner of the firm, just so he's aware of this idiots behaviour, but it looks as though exchange will be sometime this week and completion next week.

God, I hate moving!