What enquiries to raise?

[Taybz]

We are selling and buying a house and have used an online conveyancers who have now proven to be so inefficient that our house sale is about to fall through. There are rave reviews for them and we feel duped as our experience has been disappointing. If we didn't constantly chase them, not much would have gotten done i when needed.

We are now at the enquiries stage with the purchase and am wondering what enquiries they would be expected to raise? As the house is a 1930s, are there any particular enquiries we should raise? At this stage, I've lost faith in their ability** to raise the right enquiries but they did state we could raise our own. Also, how many questions are typically raised by the conveyancer with houses? We are moving from a flat so the enquiries raised by our buyers' solicitors were quite a lot (just under 50).

Not sure. Our buyers solicitor raised 9 enquiries which were fairly straightforward.
we are waiting on replies to enquiries from our vendors solicitors. I don’t know what enquires the solicitor has raised. The only 2 questions we asked was if the boiler has been recently serviced and a question about the garage which is in a separate block and leasehold (the house itself is freehold)

The enquiries we had from our buyers were relating to whether we knew of any flooding to local properties, Japanese knotweed, a question about a previous insurance claim we’d made, boiler servicing, FENSA certificates for windows and doors etc

do you have any questions that you think you want your solicitor to raise with the other party?

It really depends on the property.

I work for an online conveyancer (really hope it’s not my employers).

Is there anything on the property information form that needs clarifying for you? Are you happy you know about parking arrangements, any rights of way you need, boundary maintenance?

Have you been given a copy of the TA6 property information form?

Depending on the answers you may have further questions
Also if any changes have been made to the property you may want more information about planning/building regs etc

We haven't been given any forms or any document for that matter. Are the conveyancers obligated to share the enquiries? I'd definitely like to see them. The vendors reconstructed some of the layout of the house a while ago and fitted in a new kitchen. What do boundaries refer to? They have a shared driveway like the photo below which when we move on we'd like separated like all the other neighbours. Also, we'd like to put high fences, trellis or plant tall trees to make more privacy in the garden - should we ask questions about the possibility of doing that?

@MinnieMountain I really hope not as they've been pretty awful (I won't name them here). Is this form given to buyers as a standard?

Yes the form is standard
Have you had a fittings and contents form?

You can ask them to ask about the front boundaries
Who owns the passageway and the bit of house above it?

Sorry I realise that may be a generic driveway photo

Sorry to sound silly but who gives all these forms? Are the conveyancers supposed to receive it from the vendor's solicitors and then sent to us?

I'm a conveyancing solicitor. I won't pass comment on the usual standard of certain online firms 😬

It's impossible to say what enquiries should be raised without seeing the title documents/TA6 form/any other documents provided. If the title is straightforward and the right documentation has been supplied for any work carried out, there might be very few.

I would say 50 enquiries is an unusually high amount though and leasehold properties generally do take more work.

Yes, it's a generic driveway but very similar to the property we purchased. There is space for 2 cars to park on each side so we'd like to create some kind of barrier - wondering if that requires planning permission.

@Taybz about the forms - yes they'll receive them from the vendor's solicitor and should usually let you have a copy in case you want to ask anything about it.

I always send them to my clients as there's quite often something missing in the form that I otherwise wouldn't know about (e.g. "at the viewing the vendor mentioned he'd changed the windows last year")

@alak this is the one first and last time we go with an online conveyancer - are they actually qualified solicitors? I guess we'll have to request these forms- are they part of the searches?

@Taybz they're not always qualified no 😬 there are plenty of excellent Chartered Legal Executives and Licensed Conveyancers who do a great job as well as solicitors, but I find a lot of the online firms tend to have someone unqualified doing the bulk of the work and it's then checked/signed off by a qualified colleague towards the end of the process. Unfortunately that sometimes leads to even more enquiries being raised at a late stage. Your initial paperwork from the firm should say who your case is being dealt with, what their qualifications are and who their supervisor is.

The forms are separate to the searches but the conveyancer should cross reference the two (you'd usually have the forms before the search results). You should be fine to request a copy of the TA6 form and/or your search results once your conveyancer has them

Get a proper solicitor for your purchase. This is possibly the biggest purchase you will ever make and trying to save a few £££ could cost you dearly. It's madness!

I've just exchanged using an online conveyancer and they have been excellent. Very quick, very accessible and every form/ letter/ email etc is visible to me.

We had a straight forward process all the way through untill week 8 when we found out there were originally 12 pgs of enquiries, the most complex one being the vendor wantingto sell and reyain some land that left all of us held up for another 5 weeks till paperwork got sorted etc from solicitors

Depends on the property. Depends on the search results that came back. Depends on the answers on the sellers questionnaire. Whether the property has had any work done etc

@FuzzyPuffling lucky you! How long was the whole process?
@Laurasanford111 that's interesting - was the land outside of the house?
Am I right to assume purchasing a house should be much quicker than selling/buying a flat? Our sale is taking absolute ages particularly as our conveyancers are not on top of things.

Offers were accepted at the end of July, but our process was slowed by our buyers solicitor. They are acknowledged to be a slow outfit and the particular individual was the worst of a bad bunch. Fortunately she left about three weeks ago and things got a bit better.
I had a great sales progressor at my EA and she was great at chasing frequently and keeping me up to date.

We had 9 enquiries raised from our buyers solicitors and apparently our solicitor raised 6 for our vendors solicitors.

we are just awaiting more confirmation that all have been answered

Are 10 and below enquiries not too little? Surely you'd want to know as much as possible before making such a big purchase. Our conveyancer has now raised just 10 and I'm concerned. Also, no enquiries about boundaries and shared driveway - is this normal.
Would anyone mind sharing some examples of enquiries raised on their house? The property we're purchasing is a 1930s if that helps.

@Taybz 10 for me is around average. The TA6 is a fairly lengthy form with a lot of questions in it so a lot of things are covered by that already.

You might have already seen it but here's a sample TA6 form so you can see what it covers:

prdsitecore93.azureedge.net/-/media/files/topics/property/ta6-specimen-may-2020.pdf?rev=b0c6212edcd1483c8f70a606875608ee&hash=63D7575464B74EDA1AF8E8979DCB0A1F

@Taybz also, if you have a query about the shared driveway, there's no reason you can't ask your conveyancer to ask it for you. If it's a reasonable question (that they don't already have the answer to) they should oblige

Which one?