fast bloke

A client called me yesterday and gave the beginnings of an idea. She has spent the last three weeks on the phone non-stop to her estate agent, me and her solicitor. She was so impressed with me (she muxt have been drinking meths or summink) that she said - "I wish you could have been my estate agent and solicitor as well. Got me thinking - I could spend the next year doing a few exams and be an estate angent, a mortgage advisor and a licenced conveyancer. Now the question is - would it be worth it


Would you use a 'One Stop Property Shop' who would carry out sale of your house, sourcing of your new house, arranging of your mortgage and conveyancing of both, thus negating those three weeks worth of calls, or would you prefer to stick to one estate agent to sell, one to purchase, a mortgage advisor and a solicitor, all of whom are established. For the time being assume fees would be equal in both cases

Alas

Difficult one as the solicitor we use we trust. We use whatever estate agent. If you had a good experience you would return but if the one for all person was incompetent they could really b$lls it up.
Alas

fast bloke

Hey - who you calling incompetent... This is me we are talking about.



(Actually you have hit the nail on the head - would you look at the easy route but risk all if the person was incompetent?(

Alas

I think an important part of this would be the experience level of the client. If they've bought & sold they may be more confident to deal with different people/mortgages etc.
However could be very interesting for first time buyers?
Just a thought.
Alas

Harry_Boy

Interesting concept. But you'd have to be aware of the 'fee sharing' regulations for 'non-qualified' persons.

Also, from a practical perspective, many sols/conveyancers rely on referrals from local agents and mortgage brokers. By becoming a one-stop shop, you are instantly removing a significant proportion of your potential business.

H_B (used to practice as a property lawyer for my sins!)

fast bloke

Harry - past experience (sins) aside, would you prefer to have one person to blame or loads of people to blame?

RB5 Paul

From the experiences i've had when buying/selling my house i'd go with an all in one type place,i've found soliciters to be the slowest most uncommunicative people i've ever had the misfortune to deal with.

And from speaking to friends who have bought or sold houses i'm not alone in my experiences with the "oh yes i've been meaning to phone you for the last 2 weeks" soliciter types

So for me only chasing up 1 person instead of 3 or 4 would be fantastic

RB5 Paul

Don't take that as a dig at all soliciters i'm sure that there are some good ones out there.....I've just yet to hear about 1

Jamo

iTrader: (23)

just buying a house right now its a fooking nightmare, I would definatly go for the one place option...

*however*

the estate agent I have gone through are right *****!they were upset that i did my own research and found my own mortgage, so made life hell for me.

I would never ever ever recommend burchell edwards for anything they are crap!!! imho (disclaimer these are my thoughts and views and mine alone, scoobynet has no responsibility for my comments made on here)



just a thought but if you were to do all the work including conveyencing etc wouldnt that be a conflict of interest somewhere?

Jamo

OllyK

Most of the estate agents are offering mortgage advice and solicitors as well.

Seeing how crap estate agents are I refuse point blank to use them for anything else. My solictor is my partner's Uncle so we get good service and I am happy to leave my mortgage with the Abbey for now to allow things to go through smoothly and then review it in 12 months as I do anyway.

Having said all that, I am sure you will find plenty who would like the one stop shop.

pbee

Allthough I have experience with handling my parents land and property sales 7 transactions so far this year.

Solicitors are generally incompetent or they place to much trust on incompetent staff. We have stopped using the current solicitors as they have still failed to located 7 grand that has gone missing during a transaction in September. We will be trying a phone/mail/internet service in london that has been recomended to us. When i purchased my last house I used a local solicitors and as our representation was on holiday for the majority of the time I ended up doing must of the work myself anyway.

Estate Agents, with general house sales they are normally ok, with land they are snakes taking backhanders from developers and horders not to advertise and de-value land. And they amount charged is astronomic for the little work they actually do.

Mortgage advisors. this is a trust thing, I wouldnt use a mortgage advisor working from an estate agent or is an estate agent. And general shop around to make sure the deal is right.

I do belive there is a conflict of interest if you are all three parties. But I do belive there is an area for specilist legal parties that could handle land and property transactions, as solicitors treat this as easy money and do not give it a second thought or the attention it requires. I also belive you do not need to be a solicitor to actually handle land property transactions as I know people who do it themselves. But they abviosly know how to interact with the council and land registry.

gsm1

The problem with letting one agent do it all for you is that you lose impartiality.
Like some of these people who have bought new homes using the builder's conveyancing service, for speed and convenience, and found they have signed up to property with dodgy clauses which they would have been alerted to had they used an independent solicitor (hopefully!).

jasey

I bought a New house from a builder 5 years ago. Contacted my Solictor as I was going to be doing a "Part Ex" on the Old House. My Solicitor tells me that They cannot represent me for the exchange as they also represented the Building company (And their business was more important to them than mine). No problem I contact another Solictor and off we go.

Half way through the process my Old Solictor (who "helped" me buy the Old house and is now representing the Builder in the purchase of my old house) advises me that the garage at the Old house didn't have planning permission and I would have to get some sort of post-build-approval thingy. I asked them how come they managed to spot this discrepency when they were representing the builder but not when they were representing Me. ******* w@nkers sent me some $hit about how it wasn't their fault and they couldn't be expected to spot everything . Got the Builder to get the approval sorted - it was before the current BOOM .

I'm with gsm1 but It's not just Estate Agents that can lose their impartiality !

Money talks and loyalty is generally repaid nowadays by ripping you off !

Dream Weaver

One of our local estate agents also does conveyancing.

We had them round to value ours last week. It's 1% for the sale, or 1.25% for sale and conveyancing which is cheap, but we are sticking with the last solicitor we used cos he is good, and we owe him some dosh from our last unsuccesful house purchase which he may knock off our next bill

JohnS

iTrader: (1)

Up here in Scotland, they are pretty much all one-stop shops with regard to estate agency and conveyancing.

We recently sold our house, and bought a new one, and the quality of service we received was expectional. Kept up to date with progress as it happened (e-mails, letters and telephone calls), were very flexible and accomodating when it camed to arranging meetings (usually to sign bits of paper), never had to chase them up once about anything, and all the staff were very friendly and competant as well. They also did an excellent schedule for the property. We had 36 different people view our house in the two weeks it was on the market, and we ended up with 9 offers at the closing date!

It also helps that John Plenderleath is a Scooby owner and petrolhead (they actually sponsor a Scottish sprint/hillclimb championship, as well as competing!), so every time we spoke, we ended up spending up chatting as much about cars etc than we did about houses

www.plenrun.com is their website (no connection, other than being a very happy customer!)

Up here in Scotland, almost all houses for sale appear on a few regional websites/property centres, so it doesn't really matter which agent/solicitor you choose. Makes things so much easier, as you just go to the one website for the region you are interest in buying a house (e.g. www.aspc.co.uk covers the NE of Scotland, www.espc.co.uk covers the Edinburgh area etc), and all the properties for the different agents etc are listed. You can search by different criteria (area(s), min max price, no of rooms, bedrooms, garden, garage, double glazing etc), and even register your interest, such that when a matching porperty is added, you automatically get sent an e-mail telling you about it.

John

Harry_Boy

Good Q mate....

Probably loads, because in reality they are supposedly all specialists in their respective fields. As such, I'm happier to speak with someone who (theoretically) knows what they are doing.

Besides, an estate agent doing conveyancing will have to either employ or use the services of a licenced conveyancer or solicitor. And, as such, they will be subject to exactly the same service constraints.

As for estate agents giving mortgage advice. Well, fair enough - it's a great way to bolster their revenue with FS derived commission. But they are effectively representing both buyer and seller, and where's the impartiality in that?

ProperCharlie

IMO the estate agent is just a salesman. Wen buying I would contact several different ones in the area to see what theyc ome up with, and I automatically diisbelieve anything they say until I have seen it with my own eyes. To me they are the least important part of the chain, for a buyer. I would want an impartial solicitor, and wouldn't take mortgage advice from anyone who was involved with an estate agent.

I am fairly fortunate as I have always had good experiences in buying and selling, so the present system doesn't really bother me. Also I have access to a "proper" IFA who isn't just selling whatever cr*p he gets the most commission from.

anc-sti

Is there a potential conflict ot interests here? As a estate agent(sourcing House) you are working for the vendor and as a conveyancer your working for the buyer.

Harry_Boy

Same issue as estate agents offering mortgage advice.....

Walwal

Solicitors wouldn't rush if their @rse was on fire. They have got to be the slowest people on the planet. If I was as slow at my job as they are, I'd get the bullet (and they get about 10 times the amount per hour that I do)

One Stop Shop for me.

Andy.