It is funny when I sit down to write this as I have so many musings about conveyancing – no two days are ever the same; are we counsellors as well as conveyancers? would we have done this job if we knew now how it would be compared with how it was twenty or thirty years ago?
But this week…well, one word – Target…I know I am not alone in my frustrations with the company. But I just wanted to share what happened to me this week and let me know if it has also happened to you and how you dealt with it – other than shouting and swearing at your computer screen before realising that did not really solve anything!
I had a sale of a clients’ house complete a few weeks ago. The sale could have been an exam question – sale of a leasehold house on a managed estate with a Help to Buy equity loan….so why out of all of those different points is the hardest point the repayment of the Help to Buy equity loan? It should be so straightforward but no! authority to proceed and then authority to complete, and we didn’t complete on the first date so had to get a further authority to proceed.
But then why, oh why, is the hardest part getting confirmation that the loan has been repaid? I know it has been paid…I have done what they have asked me to do even I think that it is nonsensical – a completion statement on my firm’s letterhead certified by me. Why would I send a completion statement on my firms’ letterhead? And why then does it need to be certified by me? do they think I would send it on the letterhead and not have permission to do so?
But then they sent me an email asking me to send a further copy of the Form DS1 and then when I sent it, replying to their email, having already sent it once on completion with the completion statement, they emailed me back to say they could not action my email as they did not have the details to do so. For heaven’s sake, I was replying to their email, so they did have the details as they were emailing me with the query…why is conveyancing so difficult?
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Interesting, isn’t it? We are always being told that data speeds the process. And here we are, all the data in the world has been sent under so many guises and yet the process is held up!
Target/Help to Buy whatever they call themselves are a complete shambles. It takes forever and a day to get a discharge out of them. The process to order a redemption statement is slow and cumbersome and costs clients more money. The redemption statement has been wrong on occasion before. Let alone starting anything with Target/Help to buy that involves Transfer of Equity, Remortgage, purchasing that freehold to the leasehold house. As it is so bad, I end up charging the clients more money for the job due to their failings. Not particularly fair is it? But when we are having to cope with them and our files are open for at least twice the usual period of time, what can we do?