I am going to return to one of my favourite topics this morning – enquiries. I apologise in advance if this turns into a bit of a rant but it is fuelled by a discussion I have seen on LinkedIn.
I have written before about ‘unnecessary’ enquiries; confirming the filed plan is correct; confirming identity checks, etc. But what I have now started to get irritated by is those firms who wait until they have the result of all searches and a mortgage offer and survey before raising enquiries.
Why would any conveyancer choose to do that? Enlighten me please… is it a costs thing? Wait until you are sure that a matter is proceeding before you raise any questions?
I would ask those who do wait until they have searches before raising enquiries to think about it. My personal preference is to ask/receive enquiries when the draft contract documents are received. Ask about the restriction for a freehold management company, ask about the loft conversion. Why would I wait only to find there was no consent for the loft conversion when I receive the result of my Local Authority search and then we have to discuss how we are going to proceed? If that question is asked early on (when you see in the estate agents’ particulars there is a loft conversion and the answer in the Property Information form is there are no documents relating to it), then we can work out how we are going to proceed.
I wonder if this practice of asking questions later is leading to the lengthening turn around times of transactions, as the ‘real’ work is not done until later in the transaction, when it could be done so much earlier. And as a seller’s solicitor I would prefer to receive some questions based on the contract documents and then, if necessary, a further batch of questions once the search results are received.
As a buyer or seller, how frustrating is it not to hear or see any positive progress and then find that there are pages of enquiries based on everything received.
Raise enquiries as the matter proceeds, keep engaged with progress and importantly, keep the buyer and seller engaged and involved.
This is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
3 responses
Back in 2012ish when I was working on my own in a high street practice, for a miserly fee of £295 + VAT per conveyance (as my boss thought that cheap was the way to get people in the door) – it was more a way of holding/staving people off as you were way too busy to do the real work due to people waltzing in and out of the office demanding to be seen immediately! Guess it is part of the ‘pile it high do it cheap’ mentality. I am mending the error of my ways and agree that raising enquiries before receipt of search results shows a little proactiveness. I also had one boss tell me – why would you not check the title before you even send off for searches? You wouldn’t waste your client’s money doing the searches when there is a glaring problem on the title!
Unfortunately a lot of consultants are doing this and it is very irritating. By waiting so long to raise enquiries they are deliberating delaying the process and I will chase them weekly. Not to mention if they have waited 4 weeks to raise enquiries once the survey is in together with the mortgage and searches, what happens when there is a title issue to resolve/deed of variation? 4 weeks have been lost. Managing Partners of Law Firms really need to put a stop to this. Ultimately fees are very difficult to extract to begin with. Managing Partners should be alarmed if Fee Earners are deliberately delaying matters by 4 weeks and thereby increasing the time it takes to be paid. For me; 80% of enquiries are resolved prior to searches and in our area, we raise little enquiries as a result of the searches. Even when it comes to planning/building regs matters, I’ll check the FENSA/NICEIC/Local Authority/Gas Safe website before the searches are received.
There is no excuse for this kind of behaviour.
I don’t understand why people raise leasehold enquiries on the TA7 and prescribed enquiries. Why don’t they wait until they receive the Management Pack/LPE1 Form