Do solicitors usually raise survey-related enquiries for house buyers?

[SixLeggedSugarBug]

When buying a house, do solicitors just raise enquiries on your behalf without actually telling you what they are or do you have to know all the correct things to ask on the back of the survey?

I am thinking that's what we are paying them for, to know what things to ask?

From my perspective, I commission a survey which is sent to me, and talked through too depending upon the surveyor you use.
I then contact the agent to discuss anything that concerns me or I have questions about, or to arrange a further visit to inspect myself.

What are your circumstances OP - why is this concerning you? A FTB or a house likely to have 'issues' or something else?

Usually any issues you have with the survey, you flag with the estate agent.
Solicitor does not get involved on that side of things.
Just going through all of this at the moment. 1 enquiry left and it's taking forever 😡

Our solicitor had a copy of our survey direct from the surveyor. He read the survey and raised some issues with us. We then contacted the agent to expedite the issues. He also negotiated something with our purchaser and then notified us of the result, which was in our favour. We were not charged extra for these issues, or any others that he clarified/sorted out.

We know we had an exceptional Solicitor and we had used him before. Also, he was not part of a large company.

My experience the survey is completely separate from the solicitor. ‘Enquiries’ are something different thst the solicitor does raise but thats to do with things like flood risk

The (cash) buyers of our last house raised lots of enquiries through their solicitor, although obviously I'm not sure if it was at their suggestion or the solicitor's idea.

I know their solicitor had thoroughly digested the surveyor's report as they made a point of querying some things that only came up in the survey (issues surrounding the borehole and septic tank were just some of these).

These queries came via our own solicitor, not our EA.

The solicitors have their standard questions they will ask the sellers solicitors However they never see the house so it’s very important that you as the buyer raise anything that concerns you.

For example when I bought my house, the seller had ticked ‘No’ to the question of has it ever been extended. Having viewed the house I knew it blatantly had been extended, so I asked the solicitor to
make sure the relevant permissions were in place. If I hadn’t raised that, the solicitor were never have known there was a need to ask that question.

Survey is normally nothing to do with the solictor. It’s up to you as the buyer to read the survey, and ask the solicitor to raise any questions you have as a result.

Solicitors aren't surveyors, so we don't check the survey for you. You tell us if there's anything specific from the survey that you want raising.

We had used our Solicitor for previous house purchases. He always read the Survey and took up issues. It's the difference between a small interested firm and a large company with lots of solicitors working for multiple clients and lots of mortgage work, i.e. very busy and maybe impersonal.

Sorry I forgot I posted this 🫣

So first time buyer hence not having a clue on the process. Survey came back some minor things which were addressed with the estate agent.

Signed everything that’s been sent and returned so asked solicitors if there was anything else to sign or were we looking at completion date and for what felt like quite an abrupt email back saying they were waiting for enquiries and there was no suggestion of a completion date yet.

Do I wasn’t sure what the enquiries were, if it was to do with the survey or something else.

Enquiries are the standard questions conveyancers ask, verifying ownership, clarifying boundaries, ensuring connection to utilities etc. As well as anything else the conveyancer has picked up on they want to clarify.

However as I said earlier they have never seen the house, so it’s important you raise any additional questions you have with the solicitor. Otherwise they’ll never know to check it.

Thanks Doris, we did ask some stuff of the estate agent when we had the survey, which was answered. That’s why I was surprised the solicitors were waiting for things, I wasn’t sure if we had missed something but seems it was other things that solicitors are asking about.

The standard searches only take a few days now. Tell them the date you want to work to and get that put to the other parties involved.

The time taken to return local search results depends very much on the specific local authority, can vary hugely.

They work on both your behalf and the mortgage company. They will ask some questions that they perceive as risk, but on others you can ask your solicitor to raise the enquiry on your behalf.

I would ask them to raise the enquiry despite going to the estate agent just so the outcome is formally documented

The searches came back weeks ago, I am not sure what the enquires are but it's not the searches. (Unless there are more searches)

I am going to be brave and ask for an update, she was really abrupt though!