Revealed! What conveyancers want from estate agents

Damn good list

Be nice if it had a mandated gap in-between exchange and comp.

Otherwise, great. How do get Gov to actually act?

That is the $64,000.00 question Matt?

That $64,000 used to be worth so much more than it does now.

Its a complete waste of his time coming up with this just look how many housing ministers we have had, its just a stepping stone to a bigger and better job. We will still be talking about changing the process in 20 years and people will still be talking about the end of section 21 at the same time.

Forgot to mention land reg wont help as 50% of the forms they currently get from conveyancers are wrong and have to go back, they think the conveyancing side of law is just one rung up from estate agents already

• jeremy clarke
• 24 January 2023 13:04 PM

My solicitor made an error when registering an extended lease on one of my properties in September 2019, he failed to include the leases for teh other 3 flats. As a result Land Registry did nothing just sat on it. Now I am trying to re-mortgage and Land Registry eventually answered the phone when we asked why new lease had not been registered and advised that they needed the other 3. It has taken 3 months so far to get where we are now and it seems that my lease registration has gone to the bottom of a large pile so still not sorted! Had they returned the form in the first instance this could have been dealt with, they didn't!

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The industry loves to complain about the current status quo but both agents and conveyancers are highly resistant to change, it's rubbish, but how we like it!' that's an actual quote from a leading agent. The flip side is 'when it is mandated, things will improve' - well guess what that will mobilise the industry to rise up against it like it did when HIPs was introduced. HIPs were a sledgehammer to crack a nut, logbooks aren't. Logbooks need to be free to end users, licences are £150 per month and are a great post-completion tool that nails upfront data, cross-selling other parts of your business, and gets clients' contract ready.
What will law firms actually do if instructed earlier? How does it help?
Finally, how is an environmental search NOT essential to mitigate risk, they are desktop reports produced in seconds usually for under £50, no wonder PII renewals are so high.

Never happen; This is an industry plagued by arrogance and under performance, both conveyance and agents.

Mike, if you start anything earlier you usually finish it earlier.

• Daniel Hamilton-Charlton
• 24 January 2023 10:45 AM

Rob, I believe Mike's point may have been born out of experience when instructing a conveyancer earlier in the process only to find out that a name was written on a manilla file and thrown in to a pile in the corner of the office as the conveyancers were focussed on their live pipelines and not the prospective pipelines. As such, no advantage was afforded the transaction timescale at all as the conveyancer didn't act until the memo of sale was in hand.

But let's face it, no one wants to work a B pipeline and try to get a home owner organised for a sale; everyone wants to be chasing the money...and quite right. We know that conveyancers don't have the time and many Estate Agents don't want anything to do with the conveyancing process.

As such, the onus must be placed on the seller to get better prepared and keep paperwork organised. Let's not just say that the fix is to instruct a conveyancer sooner, as that will simply give conveyancing firms a bigger pipeline of administration to get organised, spreading their resources even thinner, adversely affecting their live pipelines... won't it?

A digital logbook can help with this and conveyancers should be handing them out to all clients post completion and estate agents should be giving them away to their entire marketplace (whether people are looking to sell or not). IF a client is prepared with all paperwork being readily available, getting a transaction underway will be significantly faster, even if the instruction is left to the last minute.

IF the industry can get to a point where a contract can go out quickly across an entire chain, we stand half a chance of reducing timescales. That change is mostly driven by how well organised a home owner has kept their property asset and how transparent they can be during marketing and not how quickly they can instruct a business. The focus and tunes haves to shift to the root causes of delays...one being client organisation.

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• Matt Faizey
• 25 January 2023 06:58 AM

*cough*

Parkinson's Law

*Cough*

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If anyone doesn't have a chain sheet, let me know and I'll send you a template for use. In my day, a sale was not booked without a completed chain sheet with a complete chain. Chain sheets went out with the Memo of sales so everyone knew what they were dealing with.

• Martin Lonsdale
• 24 January 2023 16:30 PM

I would be interested in seeing the template Daniel.

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Interesting list. I have a couple of observations to make.

Point 2. Simplifying stamp duty would not speed up transaction. Buyers should be advised of the amount at the outset when instructing a solicitor

Point 3. Baning or reducing referral fees. How does this improve the process?

Point 6. Perhaps conveyancers should apply for searches upon instruction and not wait 4-6 weeks down the line.

Point 11. Why are chain sheets needed? I have never known a solicitor contact any other part of the chain apart from their vendor and buyer's solicitor.

Point 12. There are many companies online that can carry out AML checks very quickly. We use them and it does not involve my staff dealing with this. Surely conveyancers could do this. We still know a lot of conveyancers that ask their clients to come into the office to take copies of passports and utility bills. This takes time!

Point 17. Send contracts, instruction letters, etc using signable/DocuSign. Too many still posting these out which is taking too long.

Point 19 Surely these are needed

Point 21. Perhaps they could provide a weekly update to agents, thus reducing the number of calls from them

It would have been nice to see how they themselves could improve the process rather than a list of things they would like to see changed which are mainly 3rd parties involved. I also believe they need to use more proptech than letter writing as this would improve and speed up the communication with their clients and estate agents.

Daniel, I for one as an ex conveyancer would much rather open my file and get all of my (and my clients) ducks in a row before a sale has been agreed. No stress, no one chasing me. Sale agreed contract package out. Nice:)

• Daniel Hamilton-Charlton
• 25 January 2023 08:34 AM

Agreed Rob, the rest of the industry needs to catch up though.

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Keith, this list was not produced as a list of what conveyancers want from agents. It was produced, partly in response to a comment in a legal journal saying conveyancing is more straightforward now than it ever was. Simply not true.

The list attempts to show the complexities involved in conveyancing now and why some of the delays arise.

To highlight my point, this was posted in another online magazine recently:

"A young couple were buying a property together. We might like to think it was straightforward but these were the details they gave me as we discussed the transaction in our initial conversation:

It was a new build property being a house on a managed estate

They were having a mortgage with a high street lender but also a Help to Buy equity loan

She was providing more deposit than he was

His deposit was coming from his parents

She had a Help to Buy ISA

He had a LISA

When you break down all of the parts of this transaction, that is a lot of advice you are being asked to provide and assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the conveyancer, and incredibly detailed advice."

Hi Martin and others that have been in contact about a chain sheet template. We have added one to our Estate Agent page as a PDF download. Head to our website at Property Searches Direct dot co dot uk, go to the Estate Agents Section under the 'Property Professionals' heading in the top navigation and you'll find the link at the bottom of the page. Can't add a link to this thread sorry.