A day in a Conveyancer’s world!

A day in a Conveyancer’s world!

This is how my day commences from when I log onto my computer first thing in the morning. Many people do not quite understand the work that we undertake on behalf of our clients, the mortgage company and the Estate Agents.

Conveyancers now receive the vast majority of their work via email at all times of the day and sometimes during the night when clients have had the opportunity to review any emails we have sent to them during the day.

It has always been a fast moving job but now with technology as it is, we can complete more matters in a shorter period of time.

Many conveyancers now work remotely but the need for office based people is still an important role for firms of Solicitors.  These employees meet clients for Identification of passports (ID), witness documents for clients and deal with the distribution of post.

Opening up my emails on this particular day, I received 117 emails.  The contents can range from:

• Estate Agents sending you Memorandum of Sales which have to be processed.
• Clients with queries about ID and forms to complete and return back to us for processing.
• Requests for draft sale contracts from solicitors which then means we have to download the official register and title plan from the Land Registry, draft the contract and attach all necessary forms to send to the solicitors.
• Receipt of draft sale contracts from solicitors which means we can commence the Purchase Searches online by using a plan provided by the solicitors and then we start checking the legal paperwork so enquiries can be raised of the seller’s solicitors.
• Receipt of mortgage offers.  Different mortgage companies have different ways of sending these out to us now – some by post, some by a system called LMS and some by a system called Lender Exchange.  All of these offers have to be checked and reviewed to ensure the purchase price is correct, the names of the buyers correspond to their ID and more importantly if there are any special conditions which the mortgage company impose on us as solicitors.  Note that whilst we act for the buyers in a purchase, we also act for the mortgage company and if there are any conflicts between the buyer and the mortgage company we may have to cease acting for the buyer without advising the mortgage company of the reason why due to confidentiality.
• Clients with answers to queries we have raised of them and drafting the responses back to the buyer’s solicitors.
• Dealing with exchange of contracts which means we have to speak to the clients to take their formal authority to exchange once the completion date has been agreed and then dealing with the completion.
• Dealing with updates from clients, mortgage brokers, solicitors and Estate Agents…

…Not to mention the many telephone calls received throughout the day from clients, solicitors, agents and mortgage brokers, in addition to the emails above and many more received throughout the day.

On this particular day, I was due to complete on a sale and purchase which we had already exchanged contracts on and therefore it was legally binding on all parties to complete but the buyer’s solicitors had not received the mortgage advance in from the mortgage company.  They had been chasing the mortgage company but without success.  We had to serve a formal Notice on the buyer’s solicitors as they were in breach of the contract, we had to calculate the daily interest under the contract which we would charge the buyer until they completed.  We also had an onward purchase and they served us with a formal Notice as we were in breach of our contract with them.  All of this unexpected additional work had to take priority over other matters for the day and was extremely stressful for everyone! Luckily in this case, it was resolved and all parties moved into their new properties the following day, thanks to the hard work by all conveyancers involved within the chain.

If you are thinking of selling or buying a property, please contact our experienced Residential Conveyancing Team at Askews Legal LLP in Coventry. Click here to visit our conveyancing page on our website: https://www.askewslegal.co/areas-of-practice/conveyancing/ or call our New Business Team for a no obligation quotation on 024 76 231 000.