Local Authority searches taking soooo long!

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

Just wanted to vent over how long Local Authority searches take in certain parts of the country!

Both our own and our buyer's solicitor applied for the Local Authority searches during the last week in October. Ours came back at the end of last week, whereas our buyer's (different LA in different part of the country) are not due back till the end of this month.....four weeks in total.

Obviously different parts of the country are busier than others, but four weeks!!!

We are in a very short chain and had all discussed a preferred completion date of before the end of November. This is now not going to happen and I fear that with the solicitor's inability to let their client have sight of the PIF till the searches are back, further delays will ensue (with queries arising that require answers) and Christmas will be upon us.

Is there anything that can be done to speed things up?

TIA x

Are you in direct contact with your buyer? If you are you could agree a plan of action between you with a preferred completion date a couple of weeks after the searches are due back. I know you don't know what they are going to turn up, but it can't hurt. Get your EA to work communicating with everyone too - especially if you are not in contact with the buyer.

Your buyer can ring the LA planning office and find out what the turnaround time is on searches - can't hurt and the solicitor may be over playing things if he's busy.

Fingers crossed we are about to sell a house and it has moved extremely quickly but right at the beginning I asked our solicitor what the likely hold ups would be so we were prepared and searches took just three days to turn around. I have contacted the solicitor and the EA nearly every day to push things along.

Also I have made sure I have responded very quickly to queries. Right at the beginning I completed all the paperwork in one evening, sent it back to the solicitor by special delivery and have done everything as quickly as I could.

You have to push everyone along ime.

daily phone calls to your solicitor to check progress. You have five weeks until everyone downs tools for retailmas, so get nagging.

Thanks guys!

wowfudge - we are in direct contact with our buyer, yes and we had already agreed preferred exchange and completion dates, but those won't be happening now. Our buyer has spoken to someone at the LA who confirmed the date that searches will be ready. I thought I read somewhere about doing a personal search but guess it's too late for that now plus I don't understand exactly what that entails and as our buyer has already paid for searches, they wouldn't want to be shelling out twice.....

The buyer's solicitor has quoted two weeks from date searches are back to exchange (which plus a week between exchange & completion gives us a completion date within week beginning 15/12), allowing for any queries to be dealt with - although our buyer is confident we can exchange quicker than that which is fine with us as 1) our search queries & PIF queries will have already been dealt with and 2) we (and our solicitor) are very on the ball with returning paperwork. He is local and we can just pop in asap with any docs.

All we can do is keep prodding and pushing!

Fingers crossed for you btw!

specialsubject - we have been popping in/calling our solicitor every couple of days - will now 'up the ante' and make daily calls! We really need to avoid this dragging on past Christmas as I have an ageing/sick parent in our new location, rendering our move pretty urgent......

Thanks again MNetters x