House Purchase Solicitor

[xenomorph]

Hi all

Is there a good website with good reviews for Solicitor used for house purchase?
I'm new to this and been told to avoid one which estate agents recommend.

Thanks

[Whorty]

Hi all

Is there a good website with good reviews for Solicitor used for house purchase?
I'm new to this and been told to avoid one which estate agents recommend.

Thanks

Who told you this?

Using a solicitor that the estate agents are used to working with and vice-versa is not necessarily a bad thing but as with all things do a bit of research.

I'm a lot more skeptical of review websites to be honest. Don't forget the estate agent wants the sale to go through smoothly (they make their money on completion), so they are hardly going to recommend a rubbish solicitor. You can always ask if they get a kick back but I would think that is unlikely.

[OwlHoot]

Hi all

I'm new to this and been told to avoid one which estate agents recommend. ..

For reasons which I hope are obvious, you should never use a solicitor recommended by anyone involved with the sale on the selling side, including the sellers themselves, the estate agents, and (for new builds) above all the company who built the house/estate.

To spell it out, it's an open invitation for those solicitors possibly to have one eye on the recommender's interests at the expense (often literally) of yours!

As an example, some house builders recommended solicitors who never warned their clients about the disastrous medum to long term implications of ground rent which doubled every couple of years!

[Whorty]

For reasons which I hope are obvious, you should never use a solicitor recommended by anyone involved with the sale on the selling side, including the sellers themselves, the estate agents, and (for new builds) above all the company who built the house/estate.

To spell it out, it's an open invitation for those solicitors possibly to have one eye on the recommender's interests at the expense (often literally) of yours!

That is such poor advice re the estate agent. Yes, they want the sale to go smoothly but unless you have proof, then I would think it highly (very very highly) unlikely that any decent solicitor would risk being struck off for misleading their client to help the estate agent. I've bought and sold many times and every solicitor I've used has been working for me.

As an example, some house builders recommended solicitors who never warned their clients about the disastrous medum to long term implications of ground rent which doubled every couple of years!

Do you have proof of this? That the solicitors did it because the house builder wanted them to?

Sounds to me like you have been stung in the past and you're trying to blame all solicitors for this.

[AtW]

Trust Pilot, but don’t write your own...

[SueEllen]

Do you need a solicitor or a conveyancer?

Some solicitors firms will have both but you will be dealing with a conveyancer. Or you can simply deal with a conveyancing firm.

[courtg9000]

The Estate Agent bit is semi true, especially with the larger firms of estate agents.
Quite a few large estate agencies also own conveyancing firms or property solicitor firms and these firms are quite often not that good and in some cases absolute rubbish. If recommended one of these then avoid.

If an individual negotiator/agency employee commends an independent firm to you it might not be bad advice.
Kickbacks to agents have been mentioned. This happens all the time and an estate agent employee will never be honest about it. If an estate agent employee recommends a solicitor and you use them expect the employee to get a bung of some description - usually cash in a brown envelope!

I would avoid a developer recommended firm definitely.

The vendors recommendation. I would check it out. I certainly wouldn't infer any "foul play", they are probably being kind hearted and nothing more than that.

[OwlHoot]

That is such poor advice re the estate agent. Yes, they want the sale to go smoothly but unless you have proof, then I would think it highly (very very highly) unlikely that any decent solicitor would risk being struck off for misleading their client to help the estate agent. I've bought and sold many times and every solicitor I've used has been working for me. ..

I'd agree that a private seller's recommendation is probably the least risky, but for an estate agent or builder the solicitor has the possibility of repeat business and that is a whole new dimension.

They obviously want more referrals from the estate agent in future, and thus have an interest in furthering the estate agent's prime concern which is to push the sale through. So they might be tempted to downplay any lease irregularities, for example, which could come back to bite the purchaser when the latter comes to sell and their buyer's solicitor is more on the ball.

Do you have proof of this? That the solicitors did it because the house builder wanted them to? ..

Why should anyone need proof when the possibilities of conflicts of interest are obvious, or should be? It's like saying "Do you have proof that swimming in that tank full of large sharks is a bad idea?" No I don't, because the sharks may be as good as gold on this occasion or perhaps fully fed already, but all the same it's not recommended!

In your purchases you may have been lucky enough not to encounter any complications, but many properties especially older ones have these!

But in short, why take the risk when there are so many solicitors to choose from and, I think, even review sites where these can be compared.

[xenomorph]

Thanks all
I have been looking at property from pretty large estate agents and the one they recommended was a solicitor who they used for off plan purchases of the building I was looking at but now its complete.

[OwlHoot]

If a solicitor has taken on more work than they can handle in a reasonable time, and they are completely snowed under, then ethically they should inform would be clients of this and advise them to instruct another solicitor, in extremes even new clients whose instructions they have already accepted. (The solicitor's code of conduct may even cover this, not sure though.)

So another reason not to use a solicitor recommended by an estate agent or large builder is that the loss of a referral bonus incurred by withdrawing from a case is a perverse incentive for ultra-busy solicitors to hang on to cases for grim life, however busy they are, and that will obvously result in needless delays in progressing those cases.