This week I had a one of the matters; it wasn’t tricky, rather I was hampered by a chicken and egg situation and whichever way I turned, I could not get the buyer’s conveyancer to understand what they needed to do.
I was acting for a long standing client in the sale of a leasehold property. We were starting to discuss possible completion dates, but then I had an odd email from the buyer’s conveyancer telling me they had returned the mortgage funds. I was somewhat incredulous as I had not even known that they had requested the mortgage monies! I did (politely) point out to them that at the point they had requested the mortgage monies, they must have had a proposed completion date in mind…?
They told me that they had returned the funds because I had not provided them with a completion statement; I retorted I hadn’t been asked for one; that was none of their concern they replied… I could feel myself being dragged into an email chain that was going to lead to nowhere, so just asked them to let me know what completion date best suited their client and then I would be able to prepare the completion statement.
They then told me that they could not confirm the date until they had the deposit monies, and they could not ask the buyer for the deposit monies until they had a completion statement. Now, dear readers, you know where this is going…
My client was getting irritated and fortunately, the selling agent agreed that the discussion was futile and we were getting nowhere, so he kindly stepped into the email chain, and said that he would liaise with the buyer as to the proposed completion date, and advise me so I could then obtain a statement and prepare my completion statement to be sent to the buyer’s conveyancer for them to prepare their statement for the buyer so the buyer could transfer the monies.
It was all very unnecessary (in my view) and could easily have been avoided… which would in turn have saved a lot of unnecessary stress! ALl this from a firm who won an award a few weeks ago for best conveyancing firm too…
Has anyone had a similar experience?
This column is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. The views expressed are those of the author and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
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One Response
….and conveyancing wonders why it has zero respect