How to speed up exchange?

[SarahBennettAdvice]

Hi guys,

We’re 4 months on from offer being accepted on the property we want to buy, and accepting an offer on the property we are selling. Chain of 4 in total.

In my view, we should have exchanged weeks ago, but our buyers solicitors are excruciatingly slow. (We, and everyone else in the chain are ready to exchange now).

Our buyers conveyancers are online based and were part of their mortgage brokers ‘package’. It literally takes them weeks to even acknowledge an email.

My estate agent badgers them daily, but emails are ignored and phone calls just get through to the receptionist who says they can’t speak to the relevant person because they’re busy / not in / can’t be bothered today / uncles brothers neighbours cat is stuck up a tree.

Same story goes for my solicitor, she gets nowhere chasing it up. They just seemingly only ever move at their own speed.

Does anyone have any genius ideas what I could try?

I’ve considered calling them myself, but they wouldn’t speak to me even if I did get through to someone who knows what’s going on!

Many thanks,
Sarah

I would ask your estate agent to contact your buyer to chase them up - they are the ones who are paying the fees after all.

Absolutely standard for most of these on line conveyancers I am afraid

I should mention there is a serious language barrier between me/my EA and our buyers :-(

We had this exact problem. A few times my dh called the buyers solicitor to just push things along but we found the most effective thing was turning it into our buyers problem, so each time something took ages out solicitor or EA contacted our buyer directly to hurry it along. By the time we all moved she was under no illusion that her sols where a load of crap.

We have recently had the delightful experience of our sellers estate agent telling everyone in the chain that our solicitors were being really slow and holding everything up. Then harranging us with daily phone calls.

They were not. The estate agent just didn't listen to a word I said about why we were waiting on certain pieces of information. Our sale/purchase was also the most complicated in the chain.

In the end, exchange was delayed because the vendors solicitors weren't ready!!

If I was a different person I actually would have pulled out of the bloody sale. Multiple calls about something you can't do anything about (in the middle of a pandemic! When we all have other stresses too) doesn't achieve anything at all but bad feeling.

So bear in mind that while it might be that their solicitor really is incredibly slow, it might also be that your estate agent and solicitor are keen to look like the good guys and are therefore blaming other people in the chain.

4 months for a chain of 3 ? Pah.

Over 5 months since we accepted the offer and only now are dates being talked about

Yes one solicitor being unavailable and generally incompetent

I did wonder if someone tried ringing from a new phone number whether they might pick up as I am pretty sure they were screening the other calls

“Our buyers conveyancers are online based and were part of their mortgage brokers ‘package’. It literally takes them weeks to even acknowledge an email“

Therein lies the problem.

I'm in the same position. I accepted an offer on my fathers property in October. Buyer is buying to let and eager to get in. My estate agent is good, regularly in contact. I went with a local solicitor who owing to bereavement a few weeks in, passed me on to a different branch in another town. Then a couple of weeks ago new solicitor furloughed and I was passed on to yet another branch. Buyer also switched solicitor. So we are four months down the line and it seems no further forward. Emails take an age to get a response, phone calls are rarely successful as pa will always say that he's on a call or not in etc. Chatting to estate agent yesterday he said in his experience it is usually solicitors holding things up.

The EA need to intervene.
Have the buyers fine the searches?
Have they raised all The queries from the survey?
If necessary ask the EA to get an interpreter.

@SushiGo

We have recently had the delightful experience of our sellers estate agent telling everyone in the chain that our solicitors were being really slow and holding everything up. Then harranging us with daily phone calls.

They were not. The estate agent just didn't listen to a word I said about why we were waiting on certain pieces of information. Our sale/purchase was also the most complicated in the chain.

In the end, exchange was delayed because the vendors solicitors weren't ready!!

If I was a different person I actually would have pulled out of the bloody sale. Multiple calls about something you can't do anything about (in the middle of a pandemic! When we all have other stresses too) doesn't achieve anything at all but bad feeling.

So bear in mind that while it might be that their solicitor really is incredibly slow, it might also be that your estate agent and solicitor are keen to look like the good guys and are therefore blaming other people in the chain.

I think a lot of people do this to be fair. I've met loads of people who say the other sols or EA are the problem. I've never met anyone who says it's there's!

Which conveyancers are they using OP? Certain ones are notorious.

Completely chain free and we are 8 months in. hoping to finally exchange on Monday. Just useless buyers who dragged their feet and then appointed a useless solicitor. Unfortunately i bought into the sunken cost fallacy and got myself stuck

Probably not helpful but many years ago short chain of 3 (me in middle) should have been straight forward were both dragging their feet I said if we haven't moved by x date (2 weeks before my due date) we would not be moving till 2 weeks after child had been born and so that could have been a delay of 6 weeks. Within two weeks everything was sorted (we'd previously been told it would be a month or so).
This was my solicitors idea and she'd used it a few times.