Stuff and Nonsense

It feels incredible but we’ve done it. Friday 10th June, 10 days (including a weekend) after our offer is accepted and we’ve exchanged contracts.

We’re now flat out for school applications.

I’ve rather glossed over in these posts just how many emails and phone calls were involved and how many times we chose to do something even though there was a small risk it might have to be done again.

What is clear is that we’ve been lucky. Lucky to be able to buy before selling, lucky to find the right house within days, lucky to have missed the wrong house and lucky that the following players performed so admirably, professionally and quickly.

• The One Account (Virgin branded, owned by RBS) who continue to exceed expectations as they have done for the last 12 years. They make everything easy.
• Our solicitor, Leigh Young of Stroud. They are simply outstanding and not just in this most recent task. They never send a bit of paper that can be replaced with an email!
• Cotswold District Council who completed the local searches faster than anyone could reasonably hope.
• The Cirencester branch of Perry Bishop who, as the vendor’s agents were, as their tag line suggests informative at every stage and sympathetic to our urgency.
• The surveyors whom I can’t recall at the moment who did surveys on our current and new  houses and had the results back to our lender in 1 working day.

Kudos to them all. Quite remarkable considering the scorn (often justified) poured on the wider population of all the above professions.

Our solicitor was already on standby. All usual solicitor preliminaries were in place within two days of decision to move. Today our lawyer awaits the ‘Memorandum of Sale’ from the vendor’s agent;   and so begins the first delay. Why, I ask myself is there a delay?Our lawyer uses email. The agent uses email. What exactly is the Memorandum of Sale?What does it contain? And surely, if they were expecting to sell a house as every agent should then they’d have a form where they fill in whatever details vary between sales and click send. I fail to see why this is not a 5 minute job to be done as soon as an offer is accepted. We’re already getting on for 24 hours since acceptance of our offer and my solicitors are still waiting.

My solicitors, being of frankly infinite patience are open to questions from me. It turns out the memorandum of sale simply states who the vendor’s solicitors are, how they can be contacted by my solicitors and how much we are buying the house for.  My solicitor is very good but they like all solicitors are used to following a prescribed order for conveyancing and there doesn’t seem to be much attention paid as to whether any of the steps in the process could run concurrently and so speed the process.

I ask my solicitor ‘What does the Memorandum of Sale let you do? why must you wait for it?’. The answer is that this is how they get the vendor’s solicitor’s details. They then contact them to get the ball rolling. I probe a little further thinking that I may be powerless to hurry this first step so what is the next step? can the next step be done while waiting for the first?

Step 2 is that the vendor’s solicitor sends my solicitor a copy of the land registry plan detailing the exact location of the property and the boundaries etc. that are included in the sale. This information then allows my solicitor to request the searches of the local council to find out whether someone has got planing permission to build an airport nearby. I’m a bit confused at this. I know for sure that I can buy a title plan of any property in the UK from the lend registry website for £14. I can find out what YOU own for £14.  I get the plan within a few minutes and email it to my solictor. My solicitor explains that she could order the searches based on that plan but if I’ve got the wrong plan or there is other land not shown on that plan (some properties straddle two or more ‘plans’ apparently) then the searches could be invalid. This is a house that is only 22 years old. It’s surrounded by other houses on the same estate and the plan looks identical to the property we looked at and is exactly what we were expecting. I shall take the risk that my £14 is wasted. I shall also take the risk that the £150 on local searches is wasted. I don’t consider either to be at great risk. My solicitor complies and orders the local searches. Whatever happens now, I just got the searches ordered a day earlier than would have been possible otherwise. And bear in mind, while we have already checked what the backlog is with the council on local searches (none, thankfully) that could be different tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow to order a search could mean other buyers of other properties get in the queue before us. A day is not to be underestimated!

Conveyancing lessons learnt today:

• No one cares about this purchase and the timescale like we do.
• Do not accept a schedule because ‘that’s how it’s done’. How it’s normally done is a robust, belt and braces, works for every kind of property, process. It’s not a process optimised for any individual property so question it and assess the risks yourself.