Oct
21
when buying a house can you do your own conveyancing or are you required by law to use a solicitor?
By
In the UK.
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10 Comments
July 6th, 2009 at 3:39 am
As far as I know you can do it yourself.. There is no law which states that one must use a solicitor.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am
In the US, you can. Since you used the term solicitor, I assume you are in the UK. I would guess, there, you would be required to use a solicitor, but check with the local authorities.
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July 9th, 2009 at 10:12 am
There is no reason to employ a solicitor, you need a good instruction book, the name escapes me but it is available from Amazon, then follow the step by step instructions. Its a darn sight cheaper.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:19 am
You can do it yourself and there are plenty of DIY conveyincing kits around. It is quite straight forward, but very time consuming. If you have a mortgage then you will probably have to instruct a solicitor or conveyencer at the contracts stage. That is because a building society or bank will not transfer the mortgage money to your own bank account…you might run off with it.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:33 am
You certainly can do it yourself. I was tempted to do so recently but decided it wasn’t worth the relatively small cost my solicitor charged – just for peace of mind. Even with what appears to be a straightforward sale/purchase, there are often things hidden in the searches which require attention. There were in mine and I had no mortgage, no chain. And, sometimes Building Societies are loathe to deal with individuals just in case they mess up.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
In the UK you can do it yourself
July 17th, 2009 at 12:47 am
You can do your own conveyancing in the UK. Here are a couple of useful links.
July 20th, 2009 at 4:13 am
You can do it yourself if you’re confidant enough. However, be aware that you have no recourse if you get it wrong & it may not be as simple as you think. There is an old saying that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:08 am
Solicitors are not required for anything. They are just there to cock things up and charge you a huge amount of money for doing so!!!… Seriously though..u can do anything yourself. But when it comes to property and large amounts of money…if you use a solicitor at least you have someone to blame if things go wrong…but they are not required by law to help with anything legal
July 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
You have to remember what conveyancing is. It’s making sure that at the end of the day you legally own the property, no-one else has any rights over it that you don’t know about, there’s nothing else wrong with it, and you can sell it yourself one day.
It’s very easy to say don’t pay someone else to do what you can do yourself, but the truth is that with conveyancing it’s often a false economy. As the above poster says, if you’re buying the house using a mortgage then the mortgage company will make you pay for a solicitor to act for them and handle the monies – this will be at least £150+VAT assuming you’re able to find one willing to do it. This work is included when you use a solicitor for the whole thing.
Also, the whole process is completely full of pitfalls. You might not even realise you’ve done something wrong until you go to sell the house yourself ten years later and the buyers suddenly say “er, hang on, you don’t own half your garden and the neighbours have a right to park their cars on your drive”. Sure, you can spot these things yourself if you take the time, do the research and do a lot of homework but you’ll be talking a great deal of your own time ploughing through local searches, mining searches, restrictive covenants, office copies, putting together all of the documents, and so on.
Conveyancing sounds like a rip off because you’re paying £500-odd quid and all that seems to happen is that you sign a couple of bits of paper and after an inexplicable delay you’re told you can move in. My conveyancer friend says that in four out of five transactions things do move pretty smoothly, but one in five is a complete nightmare – no-one knows who owns the property, there are disused mineshafts in the garden, there’s some grant of drainage rights with no apparent beneficiary, etc etc. It’s these ones where you get a bargain from your solicitor as he won’t charge any more than his fixed fee whereas correctly conveyancing your house to you was a complete nightmare for him. Especially think carefully if the house you’re buying is leasehold, or you’re buying under shared ownership, or some other complicating factor.
And remember, if your solicitor screws things up then you simply sue him and you’re (fairly) certain of being reimbursed whatever damage it’s caused you – do it yourself and there’s only you to blame.