Sending out contracts for exchange - when?

[SpidersAreShitheads]

Hi,

Just trying to figure out whether our solicitor has been remiss or not.

When you have bought a house, when did your solicitor send out the contracts ready for exchange? When everything was ready and all requirements received? Or did they send them to you in advance so they had them as soon as you were ready?

Three of us in this sales chain. Our buyer's solicitor has their contracts signed and ready. Our seller's solicitor has their signed contract ready. Our solicitor hasn't sent ours out yet. We're (hopefully) waiting for one small thing to be signed off by a lender and then we can exchange. Except we can't because we haven't received and returned the bloody contract.

Should the contract have been sent out already? My gut feeling is yes but not sure if I'm being unreasonable. There have been other (very significant) issues with this solicitor so don't know if I'm just piling on because I'm pissed off already.

It's been going on since the start of February if that makes a difference.

There are also time pressures because our buyer's mortgage offer runs out in three weeks.

I'm a conveyancer- it totally depends on the firm! We usually send ours out at the very beginning of the transaction however some firms do leave it to the very last stage. Maybe just give them a call and see if you can get signed up so when they have everything you are then ready to exchnage

My Solicitor is very old school, everything had to be correct before sending out contracts to be signed. He also would only accept proper pen signed contracts, which annoyed my DH, but our Solicitor said that’s the way he works and if you have a good Solicitor then this shouldn’t cause a problem or delay.

We received ours on Thursday, signed and returned them on Friday, ahead of exchange on the Monday. In actuality we didn't exchange until the following Thursday (week after receiving contracts) because despite vendors pushing for the exact exchange date, both their solicitor and the EA were on holiday that week! Anyway, that's another story...

I would also assume it may depend on how local they are to you. It needed an actual wet signature, so we had to drive it to solicitor's office after signing. If you are using someone not local, you'd need to factor in time for couriering it.

Last minute for us. Received them on the Friday, returned Monday, exchanged Thursday and completed the next day.

@Sunflower1471 @Mindymomo @mindutopia

Aah, interesting! Thanks for your replies. We were all hoping to be exchanging this week but were waiting on the lender confirming that a bit of damp found in the property doesn't make any difference (still waiting to hear though).

So in theory, if the lender had said it was fine, we'd then still be waiting for the contracts. I told our solicitor two days ago that we only have 3 weeks to get this over the finish line because our buyer's mortgage offer runs out and for various reasons, the can't renew. So we have no wiggle room to delay by another month.

Our solicitor took two months from the date of the survey to tell the lender that there's some damp in the property - and it's only that which is holding everything up. I think I just have little faith that they're doing things when they're supposed to!

Ah OK, thank you!

I saw some comments on here the other day with people saying they'd signed and returned their contracts in advance so they were ready and waiting....and with the other two parties in our mini-chain having done the same, I thought maybe our solicitor was being a bit crap - but perhaps not.