Conveyencing - does this sound right?

[Lemoncordial]

We are selling our flat. We accepted an offer back in Feb and we finally have a place to move on to ourselves after a few false starts.

The solicitor for the couple buying our flat seem to be unreliable. E.g claiming they haven't received paperwork from our solicitor when they have. As the offer was accepted months ago, they've had months to work on it.

Our buyers have told us that they solicitors say all their work is "finished" except for one enquiry that they are waiting for (from the freeholder of our building). But their solicitors haven't sent them anything. They haven't sent the results of their searches, they haven't sent them all the papers we have sent (copy of the lease, fixtures form etc). They've had these papers for months.

Does this sound right? Shouldn't they have sent these to our buyers months ago?

I am panicking as we don't to lose our the house we are buying, and we don't want these useless solicitors to mess everything up for us. We haven't got long before our mortgage offer runs out, and we won't be able to easily renew the mortgage offer due to a change in our circumstances.

Some solicitors send everything in one go, then get their clients in to sign the contract and mortgage deed. A bit silly IMHO as there's so much to read in one go.

Thanks Minniemountain.

This is such a bad way to do it. The solicitors know our timescales are tight. If they wait for ages to send the documents, and our buyers then want to raise queries from them, then we might not meet the completion date we are working to.

Hmmm...lots of solicitors and conveyancers do wait until everything is sorted to report to the buyers. The reason we do is that it is the easiest way of explaining everything as you have all the information together.

For example, I could explain the full deeds to the client as soon as I get them and say there are no rights over the road in the deeds. That could frighten the client to think there is a big problem. However, the local search could come back and say the road is adopted by the Council so a lack of rights is not an issue.

If you have all the searches and replies you have a complete picture to be able to give the buyer. Most of the time buyers don't have any further queries that are not ones their solicitor can just answer.

However, whilst I would report on all the searches, the lease and replies to enquiries at the same time, I would have already sent my client copies of the property forms as soon as I got them (so they can check everything is as they expect) and would raise anything I see as a problem as I go along.

To not have sent the buyer anything at all is very odd. I think you may need to get the buyer to chase their solicitor for the contract to sign - that may prompt the solicitor into getting the report sorted now if there is only one query left (I often report anyway if there is just one thing left and tell my clients that I will come back on that one point when I have an answer).

I am not the buyer's solicitor OP - I've just been a conveyancing solicitor for more years that I care to think about.