Who would win in a……

No seriously I thought solicitors did house moves , then discovered there’s such a thing as a conveyancer, what’s the benefit of conveyancing specialist rather than solicitor.

Cost, normally the latter will be cheaper.

To be a solicitor you need to cover ‘all’ aspects of law, even if you then go on to specialise in conveyancing.

You can be a licensed conveyancer which means you specialise only in property buying and selling and not other legal issues that may arise.

Usually a conveyancer is OK, but if you were selling a house that involved probate, or a divorce at the same time, you might need someone who is more widely qualified / experienced.

If you pay a solicitor to do your house move paperwork (cos that’s all it is, paperwork), it’ll actually be done by their in-house conveyancer.

You don’t need to use either. It’s not that hard to diy for a simple sale/purchase. You just need to follow all the steps and tick all the boxes. First time I did it I was very nervous that I’d missed something but it was fine. Done it 4 times now without a solicitor or conveyancer. All admittedly very simple deals, though

Just moved and used a conveyancer.

Contrary to nick there is absolutely no way I would try to tackle that myself.

She picked an accounting error on the mortgage transfer, found an undisclosed covenant on the new house and organised indemnity, dealt with lack of building warrants on the old house, and handled the revelation that despite being built in the 60s our new house was not registered with the Land Registry.

Pot luck, depends whether your conveyancer or solicitor is good at their job or not.

On the flip side, my last conveyancer missed the fact that my garage is held as part of a leasehold on another property and is blaming me for not picking that up before I bought the house. As I am now selling, this is a problem.

Pot luck, depends whether your conveyancer or solicitor is good at their job or not.

True, but I’m starting from the assumption that I am not good at their job. 🙂

On the flip side…

Yup some of the problems encountered in this move were a direct result of cock ups by our solicitor a decade ago when we moved in. So yeah definitely “results may vary”. 🙂

@willard sounds like it’s time to get a solicitor to sue your previous conveyancer!

On the case…

My wife is 20yrs + conveyancing secretary at a solicitors firm.  She has all the experience of any of the ‘fee earners’ but refuses to be pushed into fee earning as it then carries pressure to sell.  She can wipe the floor with most of them when it comes to knowledge and she has even had fee earners hand her files they are struggling with.

Once my wife has finished with the files she then hands it to the fee earner who checks it and then hands it to the qualified solicitor to check and sign off.  SO I would be confident that its a pretty robust series of checks.

What I find interesting is my wife will sometimes tell me of issues she has spotted on files the qualified solicitor hasn’t highlighted.  It can sometimes be an absolute minefield and the intricate nature of some of the issues confuse the hell out of me.  She once showed me a case file and I couldn’t even read it as it was all legal jargon on steroids.

No way would I fancy taking a punt on doing it myself

We’ve just bought a house – used a conveyancer rather than a solicitor – paid them £300 odd to get the land registry searches etc.. done then we exchanged, moved in etc.. & we had a letter from him.

Expected it to contain his final bill (we’d budgeted about £1000) & he had sent us a cheque for about £600. Still not sure how that works – but it was much needed cash!

IHN
If you pay a solicitor to do your house move paperwork (cos that’s all it is, paperwork), it’ll actually be done by their in-house conveyancer.

No, it isn’t. It’s checking that the paperwork is correct, and advising you accordingly.

And, no it won’t, at least, not everywhere. You’re conflating ‘conveyancer’ with ‘licensed conveyancer’ – a solicitor who specialises in conveyancing could be called ‘a conveyancer’. It depends entirely on the firm you use.

I would say a licensed conveyancer with 20+ years’ experience is, all other things being equal, probably going to be better than an NQ solicitor. But all decent firms will ensure that even if they used an NQ they will be subject to appropriate supervision.

In conveyancing, like everything else, you generally get what you pay for.

GRRR! Why does my post keep adding <div>? I even manually stripped it out and it’s back.

in 7 purchases since 1999 I used a conveyancer once and a solic the other 6.

They conveyancer was excellent, one of the solicitors was excellent, the rest were an utter shambles.

Nickjb – do you have a mortgage company involved when you DIY ?

Just moved and used a conveyancer.

Contrary to nick there is absolutely no way I would try to tackle that myself.

She picked an accounting error on the mortgage transfer, found an undisclosed covenant on the new house and organised indemnity, dealt with lack of building warrants on the old house, and handled the revelation that despite being built in the 60s our new house was not registered with the Land Registry.

Swings and roundabouts. Access to land reg and a search provider would reveal most of that along with a bit of experience. Very generally speaking, a solicitor will do a wide range of law services. Conveyancing to a small firm of solicitors is what they do to top up their revenue. In law terms it is high volume and low fee, so ideal for flexing workload up and down. Get above around five heads in the practice, though, and they’ll employ a dedicated conveyancer. As with most things, get a good one who has been around the block a few times, dealt with part leasehold (on a garage, for example) or weird covenants and you’ll be grand. Get one who is wet behind the ears, has no access to help within their firm and you will be in shit street if it turns out you have anything odd about your case.

Nickjb – do you have a mortgage company involved when you DIY ?

No, all cash deals, makes it much easier 🙂

Should still be possible to diy with a mortgage just more people to convince you know what you are doing.  The other party”s lawyers have liked to make things trickier. I’d still use a lawyer or conveyancer for a more complicated deal but having a go on these simpler deals has given me a good understanding of the process. I’ve even been going up to the land registry offices to do my own transfers.

Indemnity insurance is an amazing thing by the way. It’s all about extremely arcane ties to church chancels and the like. Rare, but very difficult in practice to actually find out if you are affected by one as it could be on a piece of yellowed paper in a drawer somewhere. Insurance companies spotted an opportunity here as they could bet against a chancel being enacted if enough people signed up to insure against it. Because hardly any solicitor would want to take the time to look properly. Outrageous really.

I attempted to do my own convancing on an inherited property. The searches were easy enough and only cost me about £6

But the forms need you to prove yourself by having them signed with photo evidence from a person like a solisiter.

So I gave in. That was a year ago and still not got round to doing the transfer.

But the forms need you to prove yourself by having them signed with photo evidence from a person like a solisiter.

You can avoid that bit by going to the land registry in person. They’ve got regional offices. Need to take your passport, the transfer forms and the fee.