Using the same conveyancing solicitor

[Papillon33]

Hello, Apologies if this seems to be a silly question. We are about to start the process of selling our house and buying another - is there any benefit to using the same conveyancing solicitor as we used when we bought our current house? Or would it generally be better to use a local one in the city where we are looking to buy? We're hoping to speed up / simplify the process as much as we can. Thank you!

Doesn’t matter at all where the solicitor is based as it’s all paperwork. You might want to go and see them so maybe someone local to you.

Agree with using someone you can visit if a signature gets missed or your DH leaves v important paperwork in his bag for over a week and has to hand deliver it

If you liked them and thought they were good / responsive last time I’d use them again. Distance doesn’t matter (I have always used firms some distance away as my brother is a solicitor with a different specialty in a different area and can always be counted on for a recommendation.

Thank you for the responses. The only reason I thought it might be beneficial to be local is that there seem to be some peculiarities to the town i live in at the moment, little things seemed to really confuse our solicitor. I was thinking it may speed things up to use them again as they might have all the info on record to share with the buyers solicitor (not sure if it works that way!). I wasn't hugely impressed with them last time, but I don't have anything to compare them to.

I think they have to do it all again, searches ect so it wouldn't matter that they had the paper work from last time

If you had a great service from your CS I'd use the same one. We always use the same one even though there has sometimes been a long distance.

Much easier to use the same ones if there is anything remotely tricky as they'll have had to sign it off when you bought it so will have to sort it out!

In my experience its better to get one that is local to where you are living now - its much easier to be able call in to sign or drop of docs etc and you can always turn up at the office and ask about progress if things get stuck.