Is there ANYTHING we can do? Vendors solicitors and purplebricks.

[Cluelessasacucumber]

I wont give you our whole sorry tale but the short version is: over 2 years trying to buy a house, 2 collapsed purchases and we are now onto house 3.

The purchase process has taken 6 months so far which is at least 3 more than we were led to expect when we put our offer in.

Our vendors are with purplebricks and using the associated solicitors (My Home Move). Oh my holy god it is excruciating. The solicitors literally do not respond to our vendor or our solicitor. Ever. The only way to get hold of them is through the purplebricks sales support team (after explaining everything because it's never the same person)

Thanks to all the delays we've been shoe horned into verbally agreeing a completion date which is just a few days before our mortage offer runs out. This date is now less than 3 weeks away and no one has even suggested a potential exchange date. The vendors solicitors are the hold up, we have been ready to go for months.

So my new tactic is to call purplebricks daily and insist they contact the solicitors. I give them a 12 hour deadline to get the situation resolved and all parties contacted, and then if this doesnt happen (it hasn't so far) I call back.

Is there any point in this? Is there ANYTHING else I can do? If this purchase doesnt work out due to the incompetence and apathy of these people I will actually have a breakdown.

maybe ask if they are thinking of exchange and completion on the same day? You still have time for separate exchange followed by completion.
or be honest about what it would mean if you miss the deadline - eg if you are thinking of abandoning the purchase in search of property number 4, if the deadline is missed.
it’s incredibly stressful when you can see the end being within reach, if only they would actually do what they are employed to do.

We've been very clear about that deadline and the fact hell would have to freeze over before we agreed to exchange and complete on the same day (chain of 4 with these cowboys in the middle, it would be madness to consider when so close to our mortage deadline).

I just cant understand how they get away with being so bad at their jobs.

I dont know whether threatening to pull out will have any impact at all seeing as they dont seem to care enough to even call their own clients! (Our vendors)

Well with everyday that passes, exchange and completion will get nearer together….
so it might be inevitable that they do coincide. It’s not the end of the world if they do.
have you considered what your next step will be if you miss your mortgage deadline? Will you pull out or will you negotiate a new mortgage package and new exchange/completion? If you are in the middle, will the rest of the chain wait for you to rearrange things?

This sounds horrendously stressful! Can you make a formal complaint to someone higher up than the sales team? In something as serious as this I would try and contact someone at the top. Or even an alternative body like a financial ombudsman or similar? I can’t believe their service is so dire and over such an important area! Best of luck xx

Having just sold a house with purple bricks and their associated solicitors I can only sympathise. Our solicitor was dreadful and as the vendor we had similar issues as you having to use the PB after sales support to get answers from them.
It did all come together so fingers crossed for you.

Can you contact the Vendors directly - ie note through the door? Would usually be frowned upon but I think you’ve got no other option. How close are you to enquiries etc being sorted? I sympathise, getting to exchange almost killed us…

Thanks for the sympathy all. We are in daily contact with our vendor but she is as stressed as we are as she doesnt know what's going on either (her solicitor wont answer her calls).

If it doesnt go through, I dont know what happens. The chain will I believe wait for us to rearrange (at increased rate to us), they don't really have any other option and we are the ones who have waiting longest so far. But what I'm asking is, is there anything I can do now to stop us for getting to that point?

Your vendor has the contract with them and she is the one who needs to act. I would apply some pressure with her. Threaten to pull out, but you have to mean it, unless x happens by y date. In the meantime, start looking at other houses and tell the local Purple Bricks agent that's what you're doing.

Where is the solicitor based? Worth turning up and demanding asking politely for a face-to-face chat?

@WeAreTheHeroes yes I think you're right. The vendors are nice but perhaps need a bit of a kick on this.

@BeautifulSunrise it's an online conveyancing service other wise I quite happily would!

What exactly is it that your solicitor is waiting for that is being chased every day?

Pp is right it's for the seller to chase, the solicitor acts for them there is nothing you can do other than call the agent to get involved l, as you are or ask the seller to chase

This happened with us but it was our conveyancer that was crap. We missed every single deadline, the buyers had to reapply for their mortgage. The second completion date the surveyor had no intention of meeting and didn’t even bother telling us (went on leave and didn’t answer calls/ emails). We ended up switching to another firm, our purchase was going to fall through if a certain date was not met and she told us that she had other work to do and that we had to adjust our expectations. I would never ever ever recommend going to a surveyor recommended by an estate agent. 10 months for a first time buyer with no chain and we were buying a new build.

How stressful!

Your vendor needs to check their initial paperwork and find out the complaints process for the solicitors. She then needs to raise a complaint as per that process, as that will get the matter onto somebody else's desk.

That sounds very stressful, OP

On a positive note, someone somewhere is communicating if all parties are gearing up to complete on an certain date. Hopefully, that has been communicated to the relevant mortgage companies up and down the chain to they can plan to release funds. As you know, exchange can happen at any point before completion and three weeks out isn't cause for too much alarm.

That said, there is always something you can do to exert a little more control in the process. I'd start by working out what is outstanding. Are you second and third in the chain of four? Assuming so:

• Has your solicitor received satisfactory replies to all enquiries raised of the vendor's solicitor, or are they still quibbling over e.g. how to handle a covenant/the need for indemnity policies?;
• Has your solicitor definitely got everything in place that they need? (are their search results in; have they finalised enquiries with the people buying your house; has the draft contract/transfer been agreed);
• What's the status with the vendor's onward purchase? Are search results in/have enquiries been finished etc.

Practically, you can get much of this information from the other lay parties in the chain. What you may wish to do is ask your solicitor to blind-copy you in on all correspondence in future so that you feel more "in the loop". You can as pp said ask your solicitor to escalate to the partners/directors in the vendor's sols firm. The more dramatic option is to email everyone on one email: your solicitor, the vendor, the vendor's conveyancer. Everyone will hate you for it (and you can only do it once, as you'll be promptly told it isn't the done thing). That firm of conveyancers is part of the Simplify group, so you can copy in some of the higher-ups (managers, directors, the CEO, the CFO). Will they do anything? Absolutely not. Will the conveyancer get in touch with your solicitor, if only to moan about the direct approach? Almost certainly. Just make sure that when you do, you are completely sure that the vendor's solicitor is solely responsible for the delay...

Actually the only thing that we found worked with an incompetent vendor was saying that you will decrease offer. We had foreseen issues (this was house 3 we were attempting to purchase) and said our offer was contingent on completing by x date. Even if you haven’t done so I think a “price will reduce by £5k every day” might focus the mind…

they have a facebook page & boy are the reviews & comments bad BUT perhaps you could contact them through that (the messenger or phone connection?) & a twitter account do a private message or comment on that

alternatively ask your vendor to move solicitors

The vendor needs to get assertive. She’s instructed them and so they’re working for her.

If your vendor isn’t calling the useless solicitor constantly then she isn’t that nice and doesn’t really care. I’d tell her that you need to exchange by X date and complete by Y date otherwise your mortgage interest rate will rise which will mean you are not in a position to pay as much for the property. So you’ll either need to reduce your offer or look elsewhere.

If you are in constant communication with all parties chasing them up, and the real problem is the PB conveyancer - which you can’t just go in and complain too being virtual, then realistically there isn’t anything you can do. If you have all your paperwork, fees, deposit etc and solicitor ready for the final exchange and completion, then that’s it. You are in a waiting position and thinking of what to do if it does fall through.
bloody stressful and very annoying, but in reality nothing you can do to force things along. You can say you want £x discount - but it doesn’t affect the solicitor- only draws things out longer as they have to draw up new paperwork. You can withdraw from the purchase - but you still don’t get the house you want.
Maybe the way forward would be to have a system where the solicitor is fined for delaying the sale beyond a set time after surveys and searches are completed? The whole system needs an overhaul for sure.

I would tell your vendor that if she wants to see this sale progress she needs to change solicitors and appoint a proper solicitor with a good reputation.

It us perfectly possible to appoint a new solicitor at this stage.

This is why if I made an offer on a PB house it would be conditional on them NOT using PB conveyancing.

So many people who advocate using PB only think about the sales side and saving money by selling their property cheaply.
People should think more about what happens after a price has been agreed - it’s a long walk from there to Completion. Sorry I know this doesn’t help you OP 🙁

Appointing a new solicitor doesn’t really help. They would be starting the process all over again from the beginning. The problem of the expiring mortgage offer would still be the same deadline, but with all the work for the new solicitor to do.

Sounds awful OP! We had a similar situation except it was us who had the appalling solicitor who never answered calls, caused us to miss exchange etc. in the end we complained to senior management at the solicitor firm and eventually our conveyancer’s manager took over and managed exchange and completion.

I don’t think you complaining to your vendor’s solicitor will work - you need to get your vendor to complain to the firm. She should be calling several times a day, demanding to speak to the partner/senior manager, and complaining through Facebook and other social media too!

Be aware that if you threaten to reduce the price, that will incur delay - we lost two weeks because we negotiated a lower price for essential maintenance, but it meant we had to go back to mortgage company to agree it, and it took ages.

Make it your vendors problem to solve.

Good luck!