PurpleBrick My home move conveyancing experience

[everfor007]

I am first time buyer, buying the property through Purplebrick, my offer got accepted. Next step is appointing to solicitor service and PurpleBrick has provide My home move conveyancing quota which is below from street solicitors around £300 less and also it has mentioned in the email, seller also using their conveyancing service and if i use their service, things will go faster..

Does anyone experience using their PB My home move conveyancing service? will be there any hidden charges, apart from given quota?

I bought via PB recently and they were abysmal. Added absolutely nothing to the process. Luckily for us, both sets of conveyancers were v good and both buyer and seller did exactly what they said they would. I would expect that any 'difficult' transactions would fall through if they depended on PB input.

I bought my house from sellers using PB and they were shocking. Slowed the whole process down. Myself and the seller ended up doing most of the work ourselves.

Please read our experience with PB in 2021 which is last year.

First of all: bear in mind two things -

1. The PB business model is that the estate agent (PB) gets paid the minute your house is listed online. NOT when your house sells. You pay the minute you go on rightMove.

1. Second - a house sells not just because it’s on rightMove. A house sells because an agent who is motivated to sell it - to actually get their fee - makes calls around to a broad network of potential buyers. They use their teams and networks to find you buyers.

In the PB business model - 1) the fee is not dependent on the sale. The fee is paid the minute you advertise and 2) the agent is a Lone Wolf. No networks, no teams, no wide database of buyers, no admin teams.

So - like fools last year we thought - hey SO cheap - let’s go for PB. And oh WOW - PB has valued our house at SO good a value. Wow - we will be rich! Let’s immediately list it via PB. And like fools we did. And the minute we did PB got their cash.

Except that then - nothing happened. No viewings. Nothing. We called around high street agents and realised that the house was wildly overpriced to tempt us in and we had fallen for it. Lowered our price. Still no viewings. Agent was AWOL.
We had already spent our money on PB.

Listed it again with high street agent, and who obviously don’t get paid till house actually completes. They used their team of 7 to call around loads of people lined up 30 viewings in week 1, we literally camped out till they showed each buyer around with care and diligence.

House sold in 2 weeks.

You need your solicitor to be independent of the person you are buying your house from/through.

A good, local solicitor is worth every penny.

We own a number of properties and would no longer buy from anyone using a PB recommended conveyancer. We had 2 properties bought from vendors using these people and they were slow to the point of disbelief and seemed utterly indifferent to the interests of their client - one of whom was a newly single mother who really needed her money quickly.

@Bjarnum

We own a number of properties and would no longer buy from anyone using a PB recommended conveyancer. We had 2 properties bought from vendors using these people and they were slow to the point of disbelief and seemed utterly indifferent to the interests of their client - one of whom was a newly single mother who really needed her money quickly.

I should add that in both cases we were cash buyers and had done our own searches and surveys.

I also bought via PB this year and the vendors used the recommended conveyancer. They had a cyber attack which delayed the process by around 3 months. I appreciate this could happen to another conveyancer but their handling of it was appalling. They lied, told the vendors things were progressing, became uncontactable for 2 months, accused our solicitor of not responding to emails etc. - eventually after 3 months they admitted they hadn't even started the vendors file, not one piece of work had been done.

Finally completed in March. The local agent gave the keys to the 3 properties in the chain (both vendors using PB, we were bottom of chain) BEFORE the chain had completed as she wanted to finish work at midday!

I know two people who tried PB, neither had a good experience tbh, neither of them sold their houses, both were over valued etc. We moved last year, didn’t even consider using PB, high street agent, yes costs more but they sold our house as a good price, worth paying the extra if you are serious about moving. Our high street agent, tried to encourage us to use their national conveyancing service, no thanks, we used a local solicitor, much better IMHO, I am all for trying to save money, but where property is concerned it’s a false economy.

Get a proper lawyer.

We had a great experience of PB as estate agents but didn't use their conveyancer. They were the cheapest but from hearing the experience of friends, their service was shocking.

We used My Home Move for the most simple transaction - we were FTBs and there was no upward chain.

If they had done it for free I'd still say we overpaid. Never, ever, ever again.