Am i nuts to think, the solicitor(s) should do their own job?

[solicitorstress]

Selling a deceased relative's house. House has been cleared, i got a cash offer. By late March my solicitor had sent out the draft contract to buyer's solicitor. I spent a couple of weeks waiting for probate to come through, this was finalised last week with my solicitor making certified copies of the document. I've done everything else thus far, including fixtures and fittings forms, with building work guarantees and other documents.

Meanwhile nothing has happened on buyer's side. My solicitor said they had received no enquiries, but assumed buyer's solicitor was waiting for search results etc.

My estate agent has been a go between and has been trying to move things along. I kept him updated on my probate progress and he passed on a couple of questions from the buyer, which i answered. The other day he told me a survey had been conducted and they were waiting for it to come back.

Estate agent emails yesterday to say that the buyer has told him their solicitor has not received a contract pack from my solicitor and could i chase this with urgency? I emailed my solicitor CCing in the agent, and my solicitor confirmed contracts sent out late March. He said no correspondence at all from buyer's solicitor.

And that was it, the whole email. So i replied to suggest they contact the buyer's solicitor again with priority, and/or resend the contracts to resolve this. Am i wrong to be annoyed that I'm telling them how to do their job?
It's like yes, tell me the problem... but how are you planning to fix it?
One side says something was sent, the other side says they didn't receive it. Okay, so we just go around in circles with that?

I emailed my agent again separately to thank him for assisting communication but also to suggest to the buyer to nudge their solicitor to... actually contact mine? Either someone is lying, or I'm not sure what else. It's not my job to babysit everyone.

You'd think if the buyer's solicitor had received NOTHING they would contact my solicitor, but apparently not - just complaining to their client (at a late stage i might add) rather than the people who can rectify it.

Is there anything else I can do at this point? There isn't much more chasing I can really do, and this should have been a quick transaction. If buyer's solicitor does not engage, what are the options? I'll add that i googled the other firm and they have five star reviews... same with my firm who I've used before, but this team isn't a patch on the last one (for a house purchase).

Having sold two houses and bought one in the past twelve months I have to say that solicitors have gone down in my estimation to almost to the same as EA's (i.e. lazy, lying and good for nothing!).

Harsh maybe but your tale so closely resembles mine (and then some) that you either used the same solicitors (unlikely!) or it is common across the board.

Solicitors can be an absolute nightmare sometimes, some of them seem to be very stubborn about chasing each other up and contacting each other, and would rather sit there for weeks waiting for the other one to do something!

I've found our estate agent's sales progressor has been a lifesaver in keeping things moving, and she said on one phone call she wants to bang the solicitors heads together as she was getting so frustrated with them! She said all of the solicitors seem to be slow at doing things at the moment, not just ours.

We stayed with the same solicitor as we got the feeling most of them are this bad, but starting to regret it now and thinking maybe we should have switched. I don't know what the solution is, but you're not alone and unfortunately this seems to be the norm for a lot of solicitors :(

People tend to choose conveyancing solicitors on the basis of cost which is a major error. Quality service and the lowest possible prices can’t work together. Low cost only works for them if they have insane volume at which point no, someone isn’t going to be assiduously chasing on a regular basis as it’s one of scores of transactions they are dealing with simultaneously and only so many hours in a day. What are you paying for the sale conveyance?

Just to clarify my earlier post, this was using three different sets of conveyancing solicitors. Had already heard poor reports of cheap(er) on-line solicitors so avoided them.

Are you sure the buyer isn't just slowing things down / messing you around. It's very easy to hide behind a solicitor's 'slowness' when you want to hold up a transaction.

@Dougieowner there were the SDLT holidays and pent up lockdown demand in the last 12 months. So maybe not the the best time period to base your opinion on.

One of the sales and the purchase were this year so things had calmed down somewhat.

Vendors and buyers worked out that the solicitors (or their admin teams) were holding things up, we were communicating with each other and timing how long for a simple message to go through the proper channels.

At one point it was suddenly sprung on us that some paperwork was urgently required by the solicitor so to reduce the chance of a delay I drove the same day 12-miles there and handed it over personally. 10-days later we were chased up for it by the other solicitor. Knowing the urgency I rang our solicitor to see if they had sent it on (why the solicitors couldn't speak to each other I don't know?) and they hadn't, it was still sitting in their "pending tray".
To say we were annoyed was an understatement.

If your solicitor has sent the pack it will be the buyer's solicitors that need to act now on instruction from the buyer. The remedy to push them along is to threat to remarked the property.

• remarket

Why don't you just engage with your solicitor more. Ask them, has this been done, chase etc.

Solicitors can be diabolical, if it’s the buyers solicitor, all you can do is give them an ultimatum, either complete or it goes back on the market.
Either the buyer is wavering or can’t get the mortgage organized.