Solicitors not on lender's approved panel. What to do?

[MrMenAndLittleMiss]

We've just found out that our solicitor is not on our mortgage lender's panel of approved solicitors and, if we want to continue, then we will incur an extra fee, payable to our lender's solicitor who will act on the lender's behalf to check our solicitors work. They can't tell us what this fee will be so we have no idea whether we will be better off cutting our losses now (deposits and fees paid so far ) and switch either solicitor or mortgate lender, or just sucking it up and carrying on as now. I've also heard it slows the process down. (We are also selling too, in a chain of four )
Has anyone else been in this situation? What did you do? How much was this extra fee? Tia.

Is it hsbc?
They are charging me £295 for this.

I've used hsbc solicitors before. They were shit.

My current solicitor has been fab. I have had loads of trouble with the mortgage from hsbc.

It's with Coventry building society. Tbh I'm not impressed as they claim to have informed me a week ago but did not. They simply called to check the name of my solicitor and then documented on their system that I had been informed they were not on the panel and I would now look for one that is!
I pointed out that the phone call would have been recorded so they are looking into this.
£295 seems very steep, it's only the buying part of the transaction that they are checking surely?

My thought would be to change solicitor or lender. If you've already paid out a fair chunk to the lender, then change solicitor.

Otherwise, everything your solicitor does for your conveyancing transaction will have to be copied to the lender's solicitor, thereby duplicating work and bringing in yet another party to the process. It not only will cost you the lender's solicitors fees in addition to your solicitor's fees, it will take twice as long, which may be an issue for anyone else in the chain.

I am a conveyancing assistant and those transactions which have a separate solicitor for the lender, generally are a pain.

Thank you Spickle.
I called Coventry today to get an answer and they told me the extra conveyancing fee would be £350 + vat
Scrap that, I'll find another lender.
Wish I'd have known all this a couple of weeks ago.

Have you approached your Solicitor to see if they can just register to go on the panel? If they are panel solicitors in general its usually not that much of an issue to sign onto another panel. We've had to do it before in my old work place. Sometimes you just end up being temporarily bumped from a panel if you haven't had a transaction with that particular lender for a period of time, so it may be more straightforwrd than you're thinking.

Apparently Coventry won't let them back on, not sure why. They are a long established firm who are on almost everyone else's panel.

Happened to me with Barclays last week, my conveyancer was not on their panel, and I was not prepared to fork out another £300 on top of the fees to have their solicitors deal with our purchase aswell as our conveyancer, that as well as having more chance of something being overlooked or further problems arising, I arranged to go with a solicitor who is on panel and luckily my conveyancer refunded all monies we had already paid

Sometimes if you forget to send the lender the deeds they'll have a little huff and throw you off

This happened to us with Tesco Bank but our solicitor just applied to be on their panel and was accepted within a week then we carried on as normal.... you can find out what the criteria are to join and if your solicitor meets them it shouldn't be an issue to sort?

Sorry just seen your latest re them not being allowed on...

Hey you could be me: we're with Coventry too. Apparently our solicitor couldn't get back on the panel for a fee of £1 because they would have to use a management system they don't have (whatever that means). We went with another solicitor. Solicitor 1 has forwarded seaches etc they have done. They will only charge us for work done and new solicitor won't need to duplicate.

The Panel system is appalling. The Mortgage Lenders claim it is to prevent fraud but it does not. It is arbitrary and discriminatory and an attack in the livelihood of property lawyers and the freedom of choice of the public. There is little you can do about it, but you should lodge a complaint about it to any lender who effectively forces you to change lawyer. The worst offenders when it comes to money laundering offences, mis-selling and numerous other financial offences are the financial institutions themselves.

Buy without a mortgage, problem solved! :)

cslawyer - unfortunately they get round it because they are not forcing you to change your lawyer, just charging extra for their panel lawyer to recheck the Report on Title.

I sympathize. My solicitor was taken over by another company a week before we were due to exchange. And the other company wasn't on my lender's panel. So overnight, my solicitor who had been totally acceptable to the bank suddenly became unacceptable

As my solicitor was basically finished I coughed up for the bank's solicitor to act on their behalf. And was on the phone pretty well every day to chase the useless bastards. It was so stressful and added a few weeks to the process. I was not happy.

Every lender and mortgage provider has different requirements for firms to be accepted on to their panels. It's very important to make sure you find a conveyancing solicitor that is approved and on the lender panel list for your chosen mortgage provider.

When we moved home, we got a mortgage with Santander, so used this service to make sure our solicitor could work with Santander

www.conveyancingcalculator.co.uk/index.cfm/mortgage-lender-panel-solicitor/Santander/

I think with some lenders, you can use a solicitor that is not approved, but they will then charge you for themselves to have legal representation (almost another conveyancing fee). Best to double check and find a firm that can just do the whole thing for you for a fixed fee so that you then know what you are paying

This happened to us, phone your solicitor as it is will be a known issue. Ours were totally fine about it, transferred the work already done to an approved solicitor and only charged us a minimal fee for the work already done. It as an easier switch to an approved solicitor than go through all the mortgage checks again.

did anyone go with the lenders solicitor. how long did the whole thing take? thanks