Is it a red flag if conveyancer won't talk to me directly?

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My conveyancer will only communicate via her assistant, and her assistant recently asked me for 3 months payslips, which is bizarre because my mortgage has already been approved. I sent her my payslips but she seems to be suspicious of them and is taking a while to 'review' them.

Are these red flags? They've already taken my £400 legal deposit but I'm wondering if I should cut my losses and have my slightly less experienced uncle process my house sale instead. I spoke to my friends who have bought houses and none of them had their solicitor ask for payslips.

My solicitor asked for proof of where our funds came from for money laundering purposes.

However in our case this was due to the fact that a family member was helping us out.

Is there a reason to be suspicious. Have you got a particularly large deposit compared to salary. If so where did the money come from?

The money, £50k, came from 5 years of savings and hard work, which is probably inconceivable to some people

Are you sure she asked for payslips and that wasn’t your mortgage broker?

You would ask for bank statements but not payslips.

Many people use their savings for their deposit that they’ve accumulated over a long period, it’s hardly inconceivable…!

Yea it was definitely my conveyancer asking me for payslips and she insists it’s totally normal and for money laundering purposes. I find it very weird

As a conveyancer if your deposit comes from savings from your earned income then it is entirely normal to ask for proof. All solicitors/conveyancers have a duty to ensure that the funds being used to purchase a property are not the proceeds of crime/money laundering. If I were acting for you I would want to see the same. With regards to the conveyancer not talking to you directly this is usually due to their workload. Most clients have no idea of the work email involved in dealing with the sale or purchase of a property and one of the biggest issues is clients constantly calling and taking up time needed for drafting etc.

My conveyancer rarely spoke to me directly and it was mostly through her useless assistant. It was infuriating!

Our conveyancer only personally spoke to us at vital points (problem with the searches, at exchange and completion). She also rang to thank us for the gift we sent her and her assistant. They were really a very good team especially compared to the shit show we’d had in the past.

We had to give bank statements for money laundering checking purposes. And we had to show where are deposit came from.

We only spoke to an assistant aswell. So sounds completely normal to me.

Sadly if you want a qualified lawyer that will actually talk to you regularly then you need to pay hourly rates and it's expensive. Really expensive. I'm a not particularly expensive solicitor and my hourly rate is over £400 plus vat. I couldn't afford to instruct me. Even for conveyancing you are looking at over £250 an hour I would think and some will be more like my rate.

I paid by the hour when we bought our house but it had issues and the lawyer was an ex colleague so charged me mates rates.

If you just go to a conveyancing house type place the only way they are profitable is to have loads and loads of files and they can't talk to everyone! In fact the assistant you speak to is probably doing most / all of the work which will just get checked over at the end by the lawyer.

Whilst the fees seem expensive to you and me they have a lot of overhead - conveyancing is always the most expensive insurance as it goes wrong so often.

In the old days a conveyancing solicitor would have 2 or 3 secretaries as one would have been unable to keep up with the output. God knows what it is like now with everyone expecting an instant response. Horrendous I expect.

And yes your solicitor is making sure she doesn't fall foul of the AML legislation as she doesn't want to be in hot water herself. She may get payslips for everyone or you may have said or done something that doesn't add up to her.