I thought the only way brokers and financial advisors can be paid now is by charging a fee. Maybe I am wrong but I thought commission for financial products was banned. There may be a commission for mortgages but not life insurance, pensions etc.
So a little update which does not seem to have progressed much.
It has been 2 weeks since out solicitors started and we paid the search fees and to date it seems nothing has been done apart from requesting ID and documents from us which we sent back.
I know these things can take a while to completion and in fairness I have no experience of this process but on speaking with my solicitors today I got the below answers which in terms of progress that should be made by now is not right.
- They received our ID and documentation around a week ago and was told today then had not had a chance to look at it.
- In terms of searches they have done not and not even started
- In regards to the Draft contract they received this from the selling Solicitor at the start of this week but advised me today they have not even looked at this and may not get to it this week.
They also came back to the Selling Solicitor saying progress was not quick due to the number of cases they have which you can imagine they were not impressed and neither was I.
Also I know specific dates cannot be given for completing things but they cannot give me any rough dates for when the above will start or be done which I find worrying.
I have spoke to them several times and am getting nothing off them. I have now emailed our Broker to see if they can help but not sure what they could do.
What do other people think of this as it is pretty normal or strange none of this is progressing and they cannot give me dates.
Our builder Miller are on the verge of pulling out of the sale as getting no confidence anything is being done and if that happens we will lose everything we have done to date. I have considered changing and going with the Miller Solicitor but not sure if we are in too deep with this one to pull out now.
Basically the process of conveyancing actually takes a matter of hours -- but, of course, you are one of many cases. The biggest hold up is likely to be the searches ... and this is in the hands of the local authority. Although all it takes is the push of a button on the computer these days, it still takes them a couple of weeks to push it!
Forms to be completed by vendors also need to be returned quickly, and this sometimes does not happen.
The draft contract should not take long to check as most conveyancers use protocol documents which are pretty much standard and the transfer itself is literally a form to be simply filled in.
Chasing your solicitors might seem like a good idea, but remember, that 10 minute phone conversation is being billed for !!
It has been a great number of years since I had any contact with the conveyancing world, but, back in the day you would be talking 2 - 3 months assuming the standard 28 days between exchange and completion. However, with enough money thrown at it this could be reduced to a couple of days !!!
My opinions are merely that .. opinions based on experience. Always seek professional advice.
IVA Completed 23rd July 2013 .... C.C. 10th January 2014
I totally agree with what you are saying and still count my lucky stars I am in this position.
However from my short experience I can see most of the time gets spent up by sending documents back and forth and a lot of waiting for things where as like you say the actual work to do everything amounts up to a couple of days.
I suppose what is worrying me more is I know other people who are buying and even though there's may take a few weeks to exchange like ours might do there solicitors have started searches and completing the contract already where as ours have not done anything making me worried as to what and when they are going to do anything.
Also when you saying phone calls being billed what do you mean. We have a quote we accepted but did not say anything about charges for phone calls etc. Also when I phone I speak to one of the assistants and not directly to the Solicitor which I am not sure if this is an issue also
Usually a call to a secretary will be free -- if you speak to the conveyancer they will usually charge -- of course all depends upon the agreed fee structure. Usually the answer can be found in the file -- conveyancing is not really the dark art they make it out to be and is fairly straightforward.
In my day the work was done and then the client was dropped with the bill to settle before completion.
Last edited by Foggy on Thu Aug 14, 2014 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My opinions are merely that .. opinions based on experience. Always seek professional advice.
IVA Completed 23rd July 2013 .... C.C. 10th January 2014
I am just in limbo now as there customer service is shocking, every time I ring they advise they are waiting on stuff they already have and it is only when I ring I find out they are waiting on something from me they have not told me about or something from Miller which when I chase Miller they say they have sent it and then when I ring my solicitor they have amazingly now found it.
Just seems if the process in average take x amount of weeks I am going to have to add on another x amount of weeks for their seemingly incompetence
Right so another update that is making me so frustrated now as this should be the exciting part just waiting for the time to tick down before we can move in but our Solicitors are not helping again just after we sorted the 1st issue.
So after an escalation to my broker and to a more senior person at their firm things have now moved on with them starting the local search which I asked them to do as takes the longest and also now going through the contract documents with a completion on them of end of next week.
So I thought everything was at least moving and had a conversation with them the other day as they had a few question they were sending in a letter about the changing the gift letter slightly and bank statements from me which did not sound a problem.
Now 2 days later than they advised the letter should be with me they now state they need more info which I advised them I could not provide for the gift money and its various sources.
So basically we are getting 2 sources of gift money from my family and my girlfriends. My girlfriends is coming from her parents and they have got it from a house sale. My gift is from my mum and is coming out of an ISA to me. We printed off and sent to the solicitors all the banks statements showing the money coming into our parents bank from each source and then going into our account and also our statement showing it coming in. They had requested the source of the money which this showed. They also asked for my mum ISA statements and my girlfriends parents completion of sale certificate which I said we could not provide for various reason such as ISA statements will cost if want for anything other then the standard yearly statement and the completion certificate had not been issued yet. They said fine just explain that in a letter. I also stated you wanted the source of where we were getting the funds which we proved were our parents and to ask for ISA and Completion certificates is actually the Source of Source of the funds which has no bearing on our case or comeback to them if anything goes wrong.
I have now received the letter today and it asks again for the ISA statements and Completion certificate and I am now fuming that one they did not mention this on the phone and also in my opinion it should be no concern to them how our parents raised that money as all they need to be certain of is that we are getting it from a legitimate source and it is guaranteed which it is as already in our bank.
Can someone advise if I am totally wrong here in saying it is overboard what they are asking for or is this something every solicitor would want as if not I am washing my hands of these solicitors and going elsewhere and with the communication and lack of urgency and stupid requests they are literally a bunch of cowboys in my opinion.
Apologies for the rant but I am terrified now of this causing Miller to pull the house out of the sale due to the incompetence of this solicitors.
For Money Laundering regulations they have to satisfy themselves as to the source of the money. How far back you need to go for this is questionable:
They are happy that the money is coming from your parents and now want to know where your parents got the money. Will they then want to know where wherever it came from got the money ??? and so on ??
They are not concerned at the guarantee of funds in this case -- but the ultimate source. Say, for the sake of the arguement your parents suddenly acquired £10k, rather than accumulated it over a period of time, they would question the source even more.
My opinions are merely that .. opinions based on experience. Always seek professional advice.
IVA Completed 23rd July 2013 .... C.C. 10th January 2014
font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:<hr height="1" noshade>Originally posted by Foggy
For Money Laundering regulations they have to satisfy themselves as to the source of the money. How far back you need to go for this is questionable:
They are happy that the money is coming from your parents and now want to know where your parents got the money. Will they then want to know where wherever it came from got the money ??? and so on ??
They are not concerned at the guarantee of funds in this case -- but the ultimate source. Say, for the sake of the arguement your parents suddenly acquired £10k, rather than accumulated it over a period of time, they would question the source even more.
Thanks Foggy,
I asked them this very question as I was annoyed they were wanting to verify where our parents got the money as I advised the contract is between us and you and as long as we can show you were are getting it from a valid source that should be enough. I said to them what if I show you an ISA statement but for all you know my mother could of got the money for the ISA by money laundering. They then said well we would have to draw the line somewhere to which I replied yes you do and it should be at the point we evidence the source of the money and not the source of the source of money which they then seemed to agree.
I can only think to ask the solicitor firm that was recommended to us by Miller to see if they are happy with just the evidence showing our parents statements where it clearly shows a transactions from Post Office saying ISA and also nationwide showing the lump sum house sale money in and then the follow on statements showing the in and out transaction until it reaches our bank
