Yesterday, after we published Russell Quirk’s latest contribution to EYE, Rob Hailstone of the Bold Group, asked, via the story’s comments section, if we would like to publish a response.
We would. And here it is.
Russell Quirk asked if conveyancers are a ‘law unto themselves’?
In his article he raised two main questions:
What do conveyancers actually do during their typical day?
Should estate agents take over the conveyancing process ‘as one’?
My response to Russell’s first question is that my typical working day (in short) was as follows:
Arrive at my office between 5.00 and 6.00 am. Open post and DX. Priorotise; easier/quicker work done first; more complicated work next; time-consuming work last.
No matter how much I had achieved, at 9.00 am I had to stop the behind the scenes work (the time-consuming and real legal work) and start taking calls, seeing client’s and dealing with emails.
If there was a (welcomed) lull during the day, then back to the time-consuming work. Phone calls were held from 1.00 pm to 2.00 pm so I could eat and work.
At 2.00 pm a similar process to the morning then continued. 5.30 pm phones off and I continued working until the most urgent time-consuming work was completed.
I would leave my office more often than not between 6.30 and 8.00 pm. I would usually work another 5 plus hours over the weekend.
The behind the scenes work involved the following, which is not an exhaustive list:
- AML and ID checks
- Seller’s solicitor/conveyancer checks
- Checking the title
- Checking the plan
- Reviewing the answers to the property information form
- Reading old conveyances, transfers and leases
- Checking management company information
- Sending out, receiving and reviewing the searches
- Raising additional enquiries
- Reviewing the clients mortgage offer and looking for any bespoke special conditions (rarely highlighted)
- Reporting to my client
It was unusual for any two transactions to be anywhere near the same.
New properties, flats, leasehold and freehold all had different issues to consider and often resolve. Even properties next door to each other had different issues to resolve.
I was always looking over my shoulder in case I missed something small but important. If I did, my clients (the buyer/seller) and the lender would be on me like a ton of bricks.
You only need look at the lender’s handbook to see how many hoops conveyancers have to jump through in order to obtain the mortgage advance.
The handbook is designed to protect the lender and put as much risk as possible on the conveyancer and their PII.
The Skipton Building Society now asks the conveyancer to state, as a fact, that their client has not been impacted by any material changes to income or expenditure from those assessed as part of the original mortgage application! All a conveyancer is really able to do is to enquire of his/her client as to whether or not there has been any material change. Another can of worms perceived to be caused and opened by the conveyancer.
The main problem was, and I think still is, interruptions during the day.
If I was locked in a room in virtual solitary confinement from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, my output would have easily doubled.
My first reaction to Russell’s second question is that if the seller was legally represented by the agent, who would act for the buyer?
Equally, if the agent then has a legal duty to the seller in the way that a conveyancer does, they are unlikely to be privy to the level of information that they currently are and would lose their ability to liaise with the buyer directly.
The other thing that needs to be seriously considered is, what would the agent actually do differently to improve the process?
Exchanging and completing a chain of transactions is like completing one big jigsaw made up of three, four, five or more smaller jigsaws all of which could have up to 50 plus pieces of their own.
Often pieces are hard to find, often people (including clients) are slow to produce them and often they are missing completely.
My 1000-piece Christmas puzzle is a much easier task!
In my opinion, the easiest and quickest way to speed up the home buying and selling process is to get the seller to instruct their conveyancer when their property is first marketed.
If that was done as a matter of course, the conveyancer could spend the marketing period (days, weeks, often months) collecting in all of the information and documentation (the missing jigsaw pieces) needed to issue a contract and pack that was virtually ‘exchange ready’. And they would be doing all of that without anyone needing to chase them!
I don’t think either agents or conveyancers need to take over the home buying and selling process.
They just need to work more closely and harmoniously together, especially in these very difficult times.
As for simultaneous exchanges and completions, another article for another day maybe?
Rob Hailstone is founder of The Bold Group, an association of independent conveyancing businesses
Comments (11)
Firstly I would say that this site now seems to use authors whose sole purpose when writing articles seems to be to cause as much furore as possible to bring about a reaction. The tabloid style now being adopted therefore seems to have worked in this instance by instigating that desired reaction.
As with any profession ( or industry as some would erroneously class conveyancing) there are good and bad, though unfortunately incompetence now proliferates, and too many people on social media seem too intent on giving themselves fancy titles rather than concentrating on being an able conveyancer and putting their clients first. Like Rob Hailstone I too have forty years in practice, and it is so frustrating to see the low standards which pass as conveyancing these days. The solution to the problem is far harder to suggest though given that the problem has been allowed to linger and worsen with each passing year, without any attempt to legislate. As stated previously standards have never been lower, yet sadly I say the same each year.
Technology is certainly not the answer given the amount of firms that use it and fail to come up to scratch despite the claims the systems they use are the best on the market. Anyone who has dealt with the Land Registry recently will know giving them more of a role in the conveyancing procedure is a non-starter. Giving Agents control of the process would not work due to the conflict of interest issues that anyone who has dealt with panel conveyancing would know is prevalent.
My view which probably makes me a dinosaur is that the system when I began work was far better than the shambles which exists now.
One issue is that the last recession saw a whole generation of experienced conveyancers retire. I fear any good ones left like myself will now take the same route. I am very much of the view with the firms one has to deal with nowadays there is little point in continuing to try and do the best for clients in increasingly difficult circumstances. Problem is the hotshots who have recently left university thinking they know everything seem to be the people who can self publicise themselves and get their ideas across. Again maybe that is due to a lack of media savvy in my generation.
I do despair of where we are going. Even in the last few months the big firms have made announcements about getting bigger, and that worrying development for customer service can only worsen. The current coronavirus pandemic has focused government attention elsewhere from the issues in the housing market and is likely to do so for some time. There is no professional regulation (though in fairness there never has been incompetence has never been a disciplinary issue) which stops the bucket shops and factories from continuing their working practices. Law Society, SRA, CLC, CQS – it is all an alphabet soup which increases paperwork not expertise, knowledge or professionalism.
Meanwhile throughout all this the poor old client buying their dream house or first property is totally forgotten. As firms pile their files higher and higher they forget their clients names and look at them as a file number or commodity. Maybe something radical like a return to putting clients first would be a good policy for everyone involved in conveyancing to consider? Although I fear that ship has long since sailed.
As a sales progressor for a long time, my bug bear was always the brief way conveyancers write to each other, not explaining anything and winding each of their clients up who basically make up their own narrative behind the brief words.
it may be due to a lack of time, as explained by the article, or a way that solicitors are taught to write but in the same way divorce lawyers have often been accused of making a previously amicable couple end up hating each other, conveyancers often end up making the seller and buyer think that each other are the most awkward person going by the words they write.
So often I have had a seller nearly pull out over the perceived awkwardness of his buyer for wanting ‘yet another indemnity’ or another report or piece of paper which they deem as sellers totally unnecessary. Why does the selling solicitor wind their client up by saying let’s refuse to supply it, when they know full well that if they were the purchasers solicitor they would absolutely demand it!! A curt little letter back saying ‘my client will not supply this’ does nothing for relationships I can promise you as the go between!!
Firstly, if you know you would demand it as a buyer solicitor, please tell me why you refuse to as a selling solicitor? And secondly why can’t the solicitor refusing it explain to his client that it’s not the buyer themselves being awkward (most of the time the buyer couldn’t care less whether they had a specific piece of paper) but that the conveyancer has certain boxes he has to tick in order to be compliant with the mortgage lender and therefore has to have it to tick the box!
When, as a go between estate agent that is all explained then it usually calms down a situation which could have been avoided with nicer and more explanatory communication between sols and their clients.
Is it just me or do other progressors find this so frustrating.
Wells couple of interesting articles, both coming from entrenched positions with no real will to make this work. ( wondering what a conveyancer does all day and a ‘ exchange ready contract are both unreasonable and unrealistic comments.)
As I have pointed out on this forum previously the conveyancing system is not fit for purpose. Technology has not speeded things up and transactions are at best no quicker than they were 20 years ago and due to new rules, probably slower on average.
I could talk for hours about my frustration with solicitors( as I am sure could most readers of this column.), but until the system is changed, conveyances are just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
I would suggest that the Land Registry becomes the place where all the relevant documents are held for a property. Building regs, s106 agreements, planning permission documents as well as the actual information for registration. Surely all these documents combined are what enable a conveyancer to decide if the title is correct and safe?
Please, someone with more knowledge and intelligence than me, come on here and say why some sort of system such as this would not be a huge improvement on the current system.
We could stop this being a battle between two opposed solicitors and have it that one conveyancer acts with potentially a title insurance being offered upon completion.
Alternative views would be welcome!
Near exchange ready is not unrealistic, developers do it, auctions do it. The need is there, the will is there and the technology is there. End of this year, at the latest!
Why not have one firm of conveyancers act for a whole chain, rather than each link involving a new conveyancing firm to protect its – I mean the client`s ! – interests?
Think of the upgrade of information there would be to individual consumers in the chain. The money-moving problem on completion would also disappear.
How does one choose the `chain firm`? I`m sure that a system can be thought through, and I`ll bet that the identity of the particular firm is of far less importance to the consumer than good advice, timely and comprehensive updating, and exchange of contracts and completion happening when expected.
The possible for conflict of interest is huge. The firms PI Insurers would go into meltdown, as would the SRA and probably most lenders.
Don`t the SRA – and the CLC for that matter – allow acting on both sides now, subject to caveats? If so, the principle is established. If I`m wrong, then has anyone thought to open the subject with them? As for the PII industry and the CML, well, as before.
Apropos conflict of interest, I don`t discount the possibility altogether but I believe that it would occur more rarely in this field of work than lawyers might think. I`d invite anyone interested enough to chuck possible examples at this thread and we`ll see how many can be managed by this new system and how many need the client to be referred elsewhere for a stand-alone bit of advice. Even that would not necessarily be fatal to the idea.
Upfront information is a mask to protect the mediocre conveyancer. Deals between decent conveyancers fly, whatever the quality of paperwork, as one knows what they want, and the other knows how to get it – all within days.
But if the masses must offer conveyancing and we must mask the mediocre then it’s knowing the right upfront information. And caring to secure it.
The Property Information Form is hopeless (TA7 even worse) and four redrafts later it remains hopeless. How many selling lawyers even check their clients’ answers. HIPS were a dreadful mess as non-lawyers prepared them. Auction packs in the main are shoddy, and don’t get me started on so many Developer’s packs.
But if you could dictate the right information was produced – it can’t be done – then you have to have every conveyancer do it. Can’t be done.
Instead, just make the TA6 a decent form – with a checklist of what MUST be there or the buyer’s lawyer can reject it, freezing the deal for all to see why.
Far easier for the Law Society, CILEX and CLC to regulate who should stop offering conveyancing. Raise the quality of the conveyancer – as my goodness, since lockdown has lifted the quality has dropped even lower than I thought it could go. Decent conveyancers make deals fly.
(Cashe – as Rob says, massive conflict – huge, dont you see it – a complete nonstarter, and PII insurance nightmare.)
Well said Rob… a rather different picture to the one painted by Squirt, sorry Quirk
The industry is full of examples of people who are an exception to the rule, bravo for getting up so early! the issue is the majority are poorly trained, risk-averse compounded by their young age and lack of experience. The conveyancing industry, like many others, failed to recover the numbers of ‘proper conveyancers’ after the financial crisis, and due to the huge level of referral fees (the only way most agents choose a conveyancer) do not have the margins to make any real money unless they scale. Here is the issue, cheap labour, poor quality, bad result for everyone.
Good article, but indeed a race to the bottom in many quarters of bucketshop conveyancing we’ve all endured. Albeit the same could be said of Estate Agency. Everybody (too many anyway) wants something for nothing.