CONVEYANCING
Moving in slow-mo
Legal expert Graham Dorman explains the common areas where delays are likely to occur in conveyancing transactions.
T
he reasons for delays in the conveyancing process are myriad. You may say that one of the major factors is lack of speed and urgency on the part of the conveyancer. But these
delays are often minor in comparison compared to delays caused by the parties themselves who, understandably, may wish to achieve their own preferred timescale over and above any contrary wishes of the other party. Over the years I have had to factor in all
of the following in achieving the exchange of contracts and negotiating completion dates for clients: booked holidays, start of a new job, job
related travel, kennelling of pets, elderly relatives going into care, pregnancy and anticipated arrival dates, lucky numbers or bad luck dates eg, Friday 13th, Decrees Absolute, notice periods to landlords, weddings, funerals, funds coming from overseas, preparation of Powers of Attorney, football or other sporting events… These are only a few – the list is endless and I am very fond of exclaiming loudly, “I haven’t heard that one before!” Thankfully we are in a period where for
one reason or another long conveyancing chains are uncommon but these may well return if market and lending conditions ease in the future. In a chain of say nine transactions (which I personally experienced the last time I moved) you can multiply the list of reasons for delay – it’s
20 JULY 2011 PROPERTYdrum Some Local Authorities bear
their unhelpfulness as a badge of honour.
maybe a little like the Richter scale, add another property into the chain and you have an exponential rise in excuses and delays. Of course, none of these are legal issues.
Throw those into the mix and it’s a wonder anybody ever moves home. On the other hand it is possible for a
client to find a property and proceed to an exchange of contracts and completion in 24 hours... ah, do you remember the heady days of 1980s consumerism when a wide boy city trader, pockets bulging with fivers, would ask you to accompany him on an ‘attended exchange’? This was a great wheeze thought up by some estate agents where the solicitor would be expected to drop all his other clients and spend a day at another solicitors office praying to Lord Almighty that the transaction would be ‘straightforward’, all the while nervously fingering his professional indemnity policy. That is an extreme case but speedy completions are still possible where the buyer has the cash, the Seller is prepared
to go quickly or the property is vacant and there is no chain. The historic reasons for legal delays have
largely disappeared. On receiving instructions today on a sale a conveyancer can prepare and submit draft contracts and legal title (provided the property is registered at the Land Registry) on the same day – a process which used to take a week or two before the days of computers and the internet. Local and other searches are now effected by most conveyancers using electronic means – some local search results are returned in hours and most are back within a few days. There are a few Local Authorities (a particular central London borough springs readily to mind) which still take much longer and which I always think bear their unhelpfulness as a badge of honour. Problems which regularly arose in the
past over access, boundaries, breaches of restrictive covenants, defective leases and the like and which conveyancers could spend many hours trying to resolve (and not infrequently to eventually advise their client not to proceed) are now remedied (at least in a money sense) by the large array of legal indemnity insurance policies available. Many of these can be effected by the conveyancer without the matter even being put to the insurers. Whether such policies offer a universal panacea to the property buyer is debatable but provided that a buyer is prepared to put up with the hassle a claim on a policy may entail then the indemnity policy offers a quick solution.
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