buying house from family - DIY conveyancing ?

In message , sm snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes

If there is a mortgage you will be having a valuation and the lender will require a solicitor to protect their interests - so you might as well make sure it is a solicitor of your choosing rather than theirs.

Would it be cheaper to have the same solicitor for the buying and selling of this family house ? There is adverserial situation as it is family. I guess a solicitor might not be required for the selling itself. Simon.

There was a Which book on DIY conveyancing. No idea if it is/was any good.

Christian.

Technically you can do it yourself. There are a few books available. "House Buying, Selling, and Conveyancing" by Bradshaw "The Conveyancing Fraud" By Joseph. He actually got the law changed exposing the whole charade. A "Which" book is available too.

Many solicitors use conveyancing as a fallback income, making this fallback all for themselves over the past 150 years. In the UK conveyancing take a long time, and they made sure it takes that long too. The average domestic lawyer who deals with divorces and the likes, knows just as much about conveyancing as the average person. He just picks up books too. Most employ a clerk to do the conveyancing, by just taking up one desk, a phone, and a poorly paid clerk.

If there is an adversarial situation the same solicitor *cannot* act for both parties; it would be a gross breach of professional ethics.

Even if you meant to write "no adversarial situation" there is still a conflict of interest so no, it's only permitted for a solicitor to act for both parties where there is no conflict of interest and in transactions below a certain value.

Owain

AFAIK, If both parties are existing clients of a firm, separate solicitors within the firm can act for them. Whether this would save any money, I dont know, but it would speed the transaction as neither solicitor could complain that they were waiting for a response from the other side

If either party felt there was the possibility of any conflict, they would be wise to use a different firm.

They could still try and charge postage on the correspondence though

Owain

Is d-i-y worth it when fixed price conveyancing is so competitive?

AIUI, buying houses from family is almost guaranteed to cause family break-up. But best look on the bright side.

john2

I beg to differ. For conveyancing I would rather have some grumpy old git who's been conveyancing houses in that street man and boy for forty years and knows all about the concealed drain from the WW2 explosives factory that no-one talks about.

For estate agency, OTOH, young and keen. There's not a lot to learn.

Owain

This is all perfectly true, and I'm certainly no big fan of solicitors, but you need to remember that you are also paying for them to take responsibility for the legal side, so if something goes wrong, now or in the future, they take the fall (and hopefully, even prevent something going wrong in the first place?)

David

In message , Owain writes

Have a go at it for a few months - housebuyers and sellers, and timewasters, will run rings around you!

I did :-)

Caused some exasperation, not running rings. Of course this was under the Scottish system where there is rather less running of rings.

Owain

Exactly!

In Scotland, it seems that once an offer is made and accepted, there are very few ways of getting out of it. As a result, people who make offers KNOW that they have the money and INTEND to proceed with the purchase. In the same way, sellers who accept an offer INTEND to sell to the person who has made the offer.

In England, once an offer is made and accepted, anyone can walk away from the deal for any reason whatsoever. People make offers which get accepted, and then go off to find out if they can get the money. People make offers on several houses which get accepted, then they cherry pick the one they want.... and so on

"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation" -- Voltaire

Owain