Property Wisdom – Don’t Cut Corners On Conveyancing
Conveyancing is your cost of securing a bulletproof investment – so go for the best you can afford, unless it’s a simple tick box purchase, says property expert Laura Henderson.
Conveyancing is a competitive business, with a mind-boggling choice of solicitors, licensed conveyancers and online products now filling out the market.
As options go, you could do a lot worse than plump for one of the larger established firms in your area. You’ll pay a bit extra, but they’ll be staffed up, have a ‘live’ network of authority contacts, work to service level agreements with agents and brokers, and deploy the technology necessary to move things through quickly. You’ll also be able to tap into their expertise on specialist areas such as restrictive covenants, boundary disputes and planning permission, something you won’t get with a ‘fixed-fee’ on-line service manned from a call-centre in the back of beyond.
E-conveyancing has its place in the market processing one-stop transactions, but the impersonal ‘conveyor-belt’ working style can be inflexible and grind to a halt if your case is anything but straightforward.
Small high street firms carry their own health warnings too. Understaffed and overworked, you run the risk of being stuck at the bottom of the “to do” pile with the likelihood that the vendor will lose faith in you as a serious buyer and pull out of the deal.
Laura Henderson is a property columnist, author and investment expert. Her latest book Tricks and Mortar: The Little Book of Property Wisdom (Book Guild Publishing) is out now on Amazon.
