Excellent Conveyancing Job – from a landlords perspective

I like to share my experiences, especially when something good comes from a difficult situation. With this in mind I’d like to share with you my experience and opinion of what constitutes an excellent Conveyancing job.

You may recall that I wrote an article back in April 2012 called “My tenant has died“. That was the first experience I’d had of that nature so this article will also bring you up to speed with what’s happened since.

I had purchased the property about six years ago, it was one of the last Sale and Rent back deals I ever did. The property had fallen significantly in value since I purchased it and was in a very tired state. It required complete refurbishment, kitchen, bathroom, re-wiring, replacement internal walls – you name it. If I had sold it in it’s current state the sale proceeds would not have covered the mortgage.  It cost just over £20,000 to refurbish and when I did the maths I decided that it was not a keeper. It made a wonderful first time buyer property but the money I had tied up in it didn’t give me a sufficient return on capital invested to justify keeping it. I put it on the market and it sold very quickly. The first person who saw it two days after listing wanted to buy it and put in an offer. Sadly they couldn’t get a mortgage and the deal fell through a month later so I re-marketed the property and found another buyer very quickly. I didn’t make a profit on this deal but I did manage to recoup all of my investment into the refurbishment and to increase the value sufficiently to break even after repaying the mortgage.

About five years ago the Conveyancer who had been looking after me retired. He had completed over 100 transactions for me so it was a very sad day for me when he decided to retire. I have used other conveyancers since then but the relationship wasn’t there. I hate paperwork (don’t we all?) and all I ever really want is for my conveyancer to report to me in a clear and concise manner  with simple instructions, e.g. little yellow tabs saying sign here or if documents are emailed to me, a note saying something along the lines of “you need to sign of page three of the first attachment and on pages 6 and 11 of the second attachment. Try asking one of those online solicitors or conveyancing factory people to do that for you!  In my experience most of the individuals you are dealing with are unqualified professionally and with limited experience. Yes I accept they have a qualified supervisor they can turn to for advice but in my experience they rarely do. I once asked such a person why they don’t use their initiative, the answer was “nobody has ever asked me to do that before”!!!  SERIOUSLY

Here’s what I decided to do

The law firm I now work with have a very strong commercial property department. However, they generally deal with bigger ticket deals than I get into, e.g. commercial transactions, large estates and farms etc. I had a chat with the Partner in charge of that department and as a favour to me he arranged for his right hand man to look after my transactions and replicate the business model I know all landlords really want from a conveyancer.  Given that I communicate daily with thousands of landlords it dawned on me that we should build a new department just to look after people like me, small to medium sized landlords who buy, sell or remortgage a house, flat or bungalow every so often.

My recommendations have been taken on board and an appointment has been made. From now on I will be recommending Jill (pictured left) to all of my readers who want the same level of conveyancing service that I have come to enjoy.

The sale of my property has now completed and I’m now confident that from here on in I will again be experiencing the service I enjoyed for years prior to the retirement of my former conveyancer.

I now WANT to do more deals 

If you are buying or selling a property at the moment and you would like an introduction to Jill, for the purpose of getting a quote for your conveyancing, please let me know by completing the form below. Finding a conveyancer who does an excellent job is such a major stress relief, give Jill your next deal and you will see what I mean:-