Making an offer by email and distant solicitor

[BoBoo]

Okay. Hopefully we will be putting an offer in on a house in the next week or so. Is it usual to put an offer in over the phone, or can you submit one by email? I'm more sure of being able to make all my points and not wavering at the first challenge if I can do it in writing rather than over the phone.

I was also wondering if there's any advantage to using a local solicitors or if a solicitor hundred of miles can serve you equally well. I've found a solicitor with really good recommendations but they're based in Manchester and we're in London.

What does everyone think?

most people submit offers over the phone but I don't see it being a problem doing so by email.

Makes no real difference if the solicitor is local or far away as most of work is done by post anyway.
Recently my brother used a conveyancing solicitor who was local to him, he thought for convenience but the solicitor was appalling bad and he may as well have used someone miles away. Personally I'd go with a good recommendation.

Good luck

Sometimes local knowledge is handy - in London you'd want your solicitor to know if the property was likely to be near works for Crossrail for example, even if it wasn't quite in the area to be caught by searches. I think it's 250 metres of a site when the search will show Crossrail as relevant. However if there is going to be a Crossrail depot in your road or the next one, you'd be affected by it for the whole of the build, and you'd want to know. Hampstead Garden Suburb is another example - it really helps to know what the local restrictions are and how strongly they're enforced.

Having said that, if you're moving within an area, and you know it already, you probably have enough local knowledge yourself. And there's a lot to be said for good recommendations.

If you want a London solicitor to be recommended let me know. I do commercial property work but there is someone I've sent residential work to for years, and people seem to be happy with him.

We've lived in the area for a number of years so know it pretty well.

I would be grateful for a recommendation if you have one - I'd like to explore a number of options. We're in SE London if that makes any difference.

I would put an offer in by phone no way would I do it by email. It just doesn't sound serious sorry if I was the seller. I would have a script of what you want to say and don't deviate. If they ask any questions that are tricky then say you get back to them. They are unlikely to negotiate at all at this point just put the offer to the vendor who will then tell the estate agent what to do.

Any good quick solicitor IMO.

I live in SW London and have used the same solicitor who is based in Leeds for years. She is fast, efficient and knowledgeable. I'd highly recommend her.

CAT me if you would like her details.

Most of my offers have been over the phone, I have only encountered one estate agent who insisted I email over a formal offer.

Good luck!

Dh and I have just bought a house for the second time. Both times we have made the offer face to face with the estate agent. We felt it would show us to be serious about the offer. Failing that I would do it by phone. You could always follow it up by email if there are things you wish to mention. (but warn the the est agent the email is coming otherwise he may miss it and make the offer to the vendor without your conditions / remarks / requests attached.)

With regards to the solicitor, I don't suppose it makes that much difference but may slow things down somewhat with regards to forms / documents needing to be posted.
We are completing on Friday so have had 4 months of dealing with conveyancers etc. Our chain turned out to be quite long and those parties holding things up were those who relied on the post to receive docs / return forms. We hand-delivered everything to keep things speedy as our conveyancer was very local. That said, in the grand and frustrating scheme of things it won't make that much difference.

Doh! That ? should be a >

I'd recommend Richard Payne at Haslam and Payne. They are based near St James' Park and his number is 0207 976 0776.

We deliberately chose a solicitor locally so we could drop paperwork in rather than post stuff. It was easier to then meet face to face to go through the deeds, ask questions etc and sign the paperwork for the exchange rather than having it posted out to us.

Also we had to visit the solicitor for money laundering reasons to prove our ID with passports etc.