Am I being taken for a fool?

Am I being taken for a fool?

10:42 AM, 27th September 2014, About 10 years ago 6

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I have 4 properties in my portfolio and I just try and to a good landlord and hope that my work reaps dividends later. Am I being taken for a fool?

I should have completed a re-mortgage yesterday (Friday) on a refurbished property that is now let. Actually I have completed the re-mortgage, I just haven’t received my money from my solicitor.

My experience of ‘profession’ is not great anyway so my expectations were not high, in fact this high street based solicitor firm have had my business for the last couple of years and have acted as conveyancers for all 4 properties. I use them because they are local and on my relatively brief investigations into the matter their costs are middle of the road.

So to my point in case… After taking 2 months to act on my behalf (the solicitor) to do a very straight forward remortage for me, and after numerous chasing emails, it was all agreed that yesterday was finally the completion date.

I emailed my solicitor directly at 9am in the morning and received this response at 09:45 “Yes, transfer of funds will happen today, have redeemed your charge with Nottingham (previous mortgage provider) so will transfer funds later on today to you”.

Despite my chasing during the day, I spoke to them at 16:45 where, after some interrogation, she admitted that “they have definitely transferred the money but might have missed the 15:30 deadline for monies to be completed today”.

Surely this cannot be right?

If I was buying a property the money would have been transferred around midday so I could get the keys. I also suspect that they haven’t transferred at all and are keeping a substantial sum of money on their own account until Monday morning.

Any advice or has anyone experienced equally poor service.

I’m based in the Beds/Bucks area so if anyone can recommend any decent conveyancy practices for the future I would be very grateful.

Regards

Chris


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Comments

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

10:46 AM, 27th September 2014, About 10 years ago

I once had a solicitor send me a cheque for nearly £300,000 - the circumstances were very similar! Problem was, I was away for three and a half weeks as of the following Monday. When I questioned this, the justification offered was that I wasn't using the money to buy something else so they thought they'd save me the Chaps fee. Needless to say, they didn't get any more of my business!

Why do you need a solicitor in the area?

Check this out >>> http://www.property118.com/excellent-conveyancing-job/33879/
.

Reader

23:31 PM, 27th September 2014, About 10 years ago

As it is your money should you not receive the interest accumulating on it within their client account?

Paul Shears

3:39 AM, 28th September 2014, About 10 years ago

OK, folks. Let me explain exactly what is going on here having done my own conveyancing five times.
1. The firm hangs onto you money as long as possible on any excuse that they can come up with.
2. They do the same with the rest of their customers but particularly with all the deposit monies past over during the course of acting on their customers behalf.
3. At any one time this means that they can hold several million pounds in their account.
4. Thus they have an interest free loan for their business which obviously earns a nice bit of interest continually.
5. If the customer is savvy enough to question the operation, they make some excuse like "Our account earns no interest whatsoever".
I once wrote to a solicitor using a very precise legal term that I can no longer quite remember for sure but it was something like "I give you these funds with you acting as my agent". They immediately panicked and rang me demanding to know why I had used the particular legal term. I explained that any interest earned would be mine. So they used the above excuse.

I've found that it's only when you do your own conveyancing that you get a close and indisputable sight of just how utterly lazy and incompetent these people are. I had one firm based in Southampton whom I was convinced for many reasons was using cheap off-shore labour. Amongst countless other problems, they had an error of basic English in every short sentence of every single communication. After many months of hard work via the law society, I got a full refund of the fees that I had paid. It was obvious however that the firm simply did not accept just how low their standards of behaviour were or that the law society had any interest in policing these people.
I've never employed or dealt with a solicitor whom I would wish to employ again.
For most standard purchases there is no reason why the whole matter cannot be done within a week with most of the real work being done within the first three hours.
For the vast majority of purchases, conveyancing is an unskilled repetitive task requiring no training whatsoever.

Paul Shears

3:48 AM, 28th September 2014, About 10 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Paul Shears" at "28/09/2014 - 03:39":

Sorry about the typos. The system locked me out before I could edit them.

Joseph Preston

9:34 AM, 28th September 2014, About 10 years ago

Seems you have done a brilliant job at DIY-Conveyancing in the past. That was not easy. You might wanna check out my profile and get in touch. We'll be happy to send you at least five conveyancing quotes from different experts that you can talk to. No obilgation, no hassle. Cheers!

Mark Alexander - Founder of Property118

10:11 AM, 28th September 2014, About 10 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Joseph Preston" at "28/09/2014 - 09:34":

You need to upgrade to business membership for commercial info to appear on your member profile.
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