Conveyancers will debate how various stakeholders – including estate agents – can deliver a more collaborative home moving experience at an upcoming event.
The panel debate will occur at the Conveyancing Association's (CA) Modernising Conveyancing Conference, set to take place on December 1 in the capital.
Attendees will discuss who is best placed to provide upfront information – estate agents, conveyancers or clients.
The CA's other panel debates will focus on 'leasehold nightmares', 'abortive transactions' and 'skinny HIPs'.
Baroness Hayter, who recently tabled questions on behalf of the CA to the Government on how improvements could be made to the home buying process, will deliver the keynote speech.
“This is definitely a pivotal moment for the conveyancing industry and the home purchase process itself and we at the CA believe industry stakeholders have a unique opportunity to reshape both for the better,” comments Eddie Goldsmith, chairman of the Conveyancing Association.
“The conference sessions will feed into the White Paper we are currently writing which will deliver the CA’s view on how we get to a much better process for all conveyancing stakeholders.”
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Skinny HIPs! Grant Schapps where are you now? HIPs should not have been scrapped so readily. Suspended, yes, but scrapped without a good long look at what went wrong and right (and what could have been changed) would have been far more sensible.
Grant Shapps is too busy being Michael Green or Sebastian Fox or whatever he calls himself now.
Good idea. Hope it goes well.
The relationship between conveyancers and agents does seem to have become quite frayed in recent years, but it's in the interests of everyone in the industry for them to be singing from the same hymn sheet. Hopefully events like this can smooth relations somewhat.
We would really love to see plenty of estate agents at the conference. Having started my career in property as an estate agent I know only too well how pivotal agents are to a positive home moving experience. If you can spare the time please come along and help us develop the right solutions.
Fully agree with this.
Its a good idea but i fear it will not work.
Any proactive agent with any real market share knows that the majority of hold ups and issues lay at the conveyancers door step.
They need to change there attitude and service. They still practice like it is 1976 and they are just not fit for purpose in 2016.
9AM - 5PM Monday to Friday and an hour for lunch - Unless you use a "Bucket shop".
Sending out inquiries and not hearing anything for 2/3 weeks and not chasing is just not acceptable.
They need to be much more proactive and maybe invest further in support staff. Yes means fees will increase but they need to. 50% of Conveyancers work come from referrals from Agents. We offer conveyancing with our preferred solicitor and we hardly ever have objection over price. Push it up and offer a better service.
They also need to respect agents, if we call for an update we are looking for what is outstanding so we can HELP YOU not the what the preconceived idea i have heard many times which is us chasing commission. Makes no difference if i am paid this month or November!
Maybe they shouldnt be squeezed for every penny by the estate agents demanding ever increasing referral fees
Now now. This is what we're trying to prevent :) Work together, not against each other.
I think conveyancers and agents need a bit of marriage counselling, because they forever seem to be at each other's throats. He said, she said, no he said, no she said.
Maybe some common ground can be reached if there is compromise and communication between both parties, which is what the above event is trying to achieve. Better than an endless stand-off, with both sides deriding the other.
Algarve
You are spot on, But the problem is there is plenty of communication from estate agents and next to none with conveyancers.
Completely agree if you didn't chase the solicitors you could almost guarantee you wouldn't hear from then until the day of exchange. That day of exchange would be much later than it should be as well, it's very hard to find a genuinely pro active solicitor at the moment.
Michael Kelleher, could it be that estate agents indicate to clients the exchange and completion process takes less time than it actually does?
From talking to both clients, estate agents and conveyancers, it seems the clients expect it to happen much quicker because they've been given an expected date by the agent, the estate agents have sales target deadlines they want to reach, and solicitors have to try and reach those deadlines, even though they know realistically it should all take longer than it does. So everyone's under pressure, and getting stressed. Is it any wonder good communication is lacking, when everyone's resenting and moaning about each other?
So true.
Offer accepted on Saturday, that afternoon the person in the agents office 'assures' the vendor 'oh, it'll be 6-8 weeks'.
Cue clients expectation is set in stone.
Memorandum of sale comes out with 'anticipated completion date' on it. Which is a) a complete work of speculative fiction and b) needlessly fuelling the clients expectations.
Cue 8 weeks in and client is twitchy, agent cannot say 'oops, sorry, yes, we were talking bullshit'. So instead blames 'solicitors'.
Client then harries solicitor to meet the utter work of fiction completion date set 8 weeks ago.
Vendors all through chain now extremely twitchy as 'it's taking longer than it should' and 'I wonder if the buyer/seller is up to something'.
Cross all this with the motives at play for end of financial quarters and bonus' and its no wonder @1 in 5 fail before exchange.
You wish to fix the communication?
Write one hymn sheet, laminate it, and force the 'sales negotiators' and conveyancers alike to memorise the damn thing.
And STOP setting each other up to fail all the time because you're all used to repeated the same old mantras over and over again. Using fixed one liners as placebos to keep the client happy.
We aim for a 4 week max exchange as Agents are waiting on us to get paid, and clients want to deal exchanged. Absolutely state a timescale in the Memo of Sale. We love that. It is a stick to use when chasing slow conveyancers.
If you get grumbling conveyancers wanting more time, then refer to us. We love to chase, as we spend 60% of our time doing so anyway. Prompt expert legal work. You'll be impressed.
It’s a joke! Let’s all wake up and smell the coffee. As ex estate, and conveyancer, I’ve seen for decades exchange of mistrust between the two. Sometimes that’s about all that gets exchanged!! The sooner we all realise we are on ‘team client’ and talk to each other properly the sooner the horrendous abortive rates will stop.
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