Conveyancers with jr team and NO communication - AVOID
The is the worst professional service that I have ever used, and I use the word “professional” only as a definition, not an adjective. They would barrage me with emails, all copy/paste jobs so it would contain information that was irrelevant to me, and cause confusion. My mortgage broker would step in to help explain because despite asking questions back to the solicitor, no one would answer unless the answer helped THEM. “Can I scan this document? Yes.” “Can you explain the clause on this paper you’re asking me to sign? Even if I asked multiple times, they would not address or answer me. And I was asking such bold questions as “when do you think you will be ready to exchange?” It was only after the email shaming them to the broker that they were magically ready to exchange THE NEXT DAY. Imagine that. I come from the US where you would attend a closing, in person, and your solicitor/agent would walk you through every single document you’re signing. I appreciate that is NOT the process here, but if I have specific questions about things you’re doing or things you’re asking me to do, you should answer. I pay you, you are technically working for me - you represent me in this transaction. At one point they sent me a YouTube video that was meant to explain the process, but the video had been removed. Falling at every, single, hurdle. It did not help that it was also a team of clearly junior people responding, and so I never knew who I was interacting with, and whether or not they were all communicating with each other, and on the same page. (Spoiler alert: they were not.) It feels like a recipe for disaster to have an unknown number of people emailing you all the time with different information and requirements. And given I was asked to provide the same information/forms/documentation repeatedly, I know that details were falling through the cracks. Basically they were asleep at the wheel, and I was having to confirm and chase to make sure they had the required documentation. Even when I had sent it multiple times, they were not aware and telling me they were still missing things. March 12 was always stated as date of completion. When I emailed a week out I got the response of “we have no idea and can tell you nothing.” I emailed again 2 days out. “We have received nothing, so it’s not happening that day. Call your site office.” Let’s pretend that’s not your job…so I call the site office and they tell me it IS meant to be this week and they HAVE been issued completion notice - “leave it with me” says the site office. NO ONE bothered to clarify that the initial completion - the date that had been shared with me over and over - was build completion, not MY completion, pushing the whole process back another 10-14 days. This disrupted all plans. When completion paperwork was served by the builder to me, I had to ask repeatedly for the solicitor to give me the final financials. I get the completion doc and they have not calculated stamp duty. I had to send it to my tax advisor to check if that was correct - it was not. Despite having submitted on multiple occasions, including confirming the week prior that I had owned property before, they gave me an “oops, our system thought you were a first-time buyer.” This is perhaps the more alarming and grave error they made, and they did not apologise or take any accountability for their error. The whole process suffered from a complete lack of communication - I repeatedly had to keep asking for confirmation and next steps. I have zero faith that anything has been done correctly. It was a shambles of disorganisation and I feel lucky I have completed on a property at all given their general lack of effort and attention to detail. I fully anticipate that in the coming years, I will continue to reap the rewards of their total incompetence when I find out some piece of paperwork is incorrect or never filed/completed at all. Please, for your own sanity, and the sake of your purchase, DO NOT hire or use these solicitors.