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We’ve just accepted an offer on our house to cash buyers who are hoping to push the sale through before end of June to beat the stamp duty deadline. We’re going into a rental so no chain our end either so may just be possible depending on solicitors and we don’t want to delay anything either.
The agents have an arrangement with a local solicitors firm and the buyers have agreed to use it. We’ve been advised by them (as you would) to do the same as this will very likely speed things up considerably if we use the same solicitors and the agent can act in the middle too. The quote is £1700 vs approx £1300 I’d had from two local firms so a bit more but not massively so.
I’m torn. Can see that it would potentially smooth things through a lot, but worried a bit that these agent linked arrangements may be dodgy and not sure about conflict of interest?
Any views?
It's allowed under the SRA rules (this came up recently).
Provided both parties agree, and you have been informed about the referral fee by the estate agent, then there's nothing inherently wrong with the suggestion.
Relationship with the estate agent is permissable provided you've been advised about what it means (and it sounds like you have).
However, I would be slightly wary (from experience) of using the EA's suggested solicitors without getting some more quotes or discussions with friends etc. Rightly or wrongly, there could be an issue if something goes wrong with a reluctance for the solicitor to get stuck into the EA if the EA supplies a large part of their work. No doubt an independent sol would also get work from the EA (or at least know them) but that risk may be reduced.
We are in this situation at the moment. We were only allowed to use the same firm because both parties were pre-existing customers, was my understanding. Also the individual solicitors cannot be the same person for both sides of the transaction. You will be assigned to one and your buyers another.
Can't really see there's much of a problem with it. The individual solicitors should still act independently in their client's interest, and it's mostly admin work anyway, especially from the seller's perspective. Should speed up turnaround time for questions etc.
No!
Get your own solicitor. I can't believe the practise is even allowed. What if there is an issue further down the line? Who are they going to act for?
The intermediary is Lifetime Legal through Miles and Barr estate agents if anyone has any specific info or experience. My gut is telling me to swerve it but
What if there is an issue further down the line? Who are they going to act for?
Well, they wouldn't be allowed to act for either as they would be placed in a situation of conflict. But a transaction isn't immediately like a contentious situation - provided all parties have given informed consent, then it should be fine. If something comes up during the transaction that means there might be an adversarial issue between the parties, then the sols might have to stop acting.
I would never advise this if you were the buyer but you being seller side means you can be a bit more relaxed. That said, if that arrangement is (bizarrely) more expensive, you’d have to question the benefit to you over instructing a decent solicitor of your own. If you find someone who uses things like telephones and emails rather than carrier pigeons it shouldn’t impact the timing. If it’s a simple title and the searches come back in time you should be ok.
The agent mentioned the name of the local firm in the phone. Looking at the quote this lifetime legal refer to a ‘panel solicitor’ and there’s costs against that that are similar to the other costs we’ve had. I think all this firm are doing are acting as a referral vehicle of some form and it will just end up with this local firm but cost me £400 more. I’m going to go direct I think to them for a quote and see what happens?
Well, if Lifetime Legal are simply a referrer then going direct to them won't help, I'd have thought. Panel solicitor means a firm which is on the referrer's panel of approved firms - that doesn't mean they're good, just that they meet the referrer's criteria (some of which may be paying referral fees or charging lower rates so the referrer pockets the difference).
I'd just approach a few firms directly.
We used a solicitor recommended by the estate agent and he got it done in seven weeks.
Well, if Lifetime Legal are simply a referrer then going direct to them won’t help, I’d have thought.
I meant go direct to the local firm for a quote and bypass lifetime legal which I’ve done. But had to do on email as was on hold for a good while -which isn’t promising!
I was told many years ago (things may have changed / I was mislead) that this was illegal. Even if it wasn't, I'd only go down that route if youknew 100% that there would be no issues. Conflict of interests springs to mind. It sounds like the solicitors probably get a bung from the EA to ensure completion.