We’re buying a house. We’re in rented at the moment, so we’re not selling anything.

We’ve instructed some solicitors. We’ve applied for a mortgage. The lender is saying that the solicitors we’ve instructed aren’t on their panel, so we need to pay a fee for them to instruct some solicitors too.

We can of course ditch our solicitors and go with theirs, but that’s a pain as a) we’ve already paid them a deposit and b) our passports are currently en-route to them as part of the ID checks they have to do at engagement.

So, I’m tempted to just pay the fee (I think it’s £300) and suck it up. However, I’m wondering then what exactly ours will do, given that all they had to deal with was the purchase, and now the lender’s one’s will do that. Or, is that not what the lender’s ones are going to do, and if so, what’s their role? Will they just post things to ours for us to sign?

I is confused. And £300 lighter.

It means your solicitor isn’t authorised to instruct dealings on your lenders behalf, you don’t however need to completely switch solicitors. We are in the same boat but our solicitor is using another solicitor for the paperwork that relates to our lender, it’s costing us about £50. Our original solicitor is doing everything else related to the sale of the property.

Eta. A quick google finds this

HSBC?

Get ready for a shambles.

We did the same thing, had the solicitors in place, and the mortgage application in. We paid the extra money and stuck with the solicitor we had appointed.

Unfortunately, you just end up in a three way paper trail between your, HSBC’s (Countrywide aka Shower of Shit), and the seller’s solicitors. After completion, our solicitor said we are the last HSBC customers she will deal with, as it’s not worth the hassle.

Oh, and your solicitor might want to charge you more because it drags the process.

HSBC?

Bit of a scam. We pulled the plug on them when they said 8 weeks to turn around our application. Nothing but horror stories about them online.

Some lenders prefer to work with specific solicitors, ie their panel. Many lenders don’t care however. House conveyancing is pretty simple these days and cheap so paying £300 means you are paying twice. The bank’s solicitors should charge less as yours have done all the work. You could try and get your solicitors to contact the bank directly to clarify. You could approach another lender.

Just to echo Vorlich’s experience, there was no chain at either end when we got our place.

It took so long for the sale to go through, that we started getting letters from HSBC saying our mortage offer was going to expire.

It’s winding me up just writing about it.

Not HSBC, Platform (aka the Co-Op)