I try to do a blog post a week and write about different things – adverse, success stories etc. October has been a bit of an odd month though. Its been a little bit on the quiet side. Because of that, if I write about the market it will be a bit depressing and I think we have enough negativity at the moment. But because of that I also do not have any good success stories, they are all just run of the mill.
With that in mind I thought why not write about some of the things we have done which hopefully help us to add value to the house buying process…
Adding Value or making life easier?
Client 1 – They were going to use a solicitor their parents recommended. It is always a good shout to use a recommended firm rather than picking a solicitors at random as they can be hit and miss. However, because the client was buying their parents home and their parents were using the same firm, they asked if we had a recommendation.
We did – we saved them around £300 and the reviews have been very positive… unlike their parents solicitor who has been slowing the purchase down! Even recommendations can go wrong sometimes.
Client 2 – Another one with solicitors! They decided to go with a solicitor recommended to them by a relative. Their solicitor is useless at communicating. To the point where it caused a delay to completion and was threatening to cause another delay. Thankfully the clients got in touch and I was able to get the information they needed and let them know. This prevented another delay. A 10 minute job for me, but something their solicitor had not been able to do in 4 days!
Client 3 – We had a mortgage offered, as rates have been coming down we had been keeping an eye out. We were able to switch their products twice and get their repayments from around £1030 per month to around £980. Not a huge amount but £50 x 24 months is £1,200 which is £700 more than our fee!
Client 4 – Clients have had a problem crop up at the legals stage. They had a wobble and started to worry. It is not something I had come across before so I went off to investigate. I spoke to the agents to try to understand the problem better (it was a first for them also!).
In the end we discovered that the communication between the customer and the agent was not great and that had resulted in some confusion. I was able to give them a timeframe breakdown of the situation and also reassure them that we had plenty of time on our side and that I was fairly confident it would be resolved in time based on timeframes we were able to find online.
Summary
Occasionally we receive calls from people asking what rates we can get them. I try to explain we are not a price comparison service (although in example of Case 2 above, we were able to save them money on what they found on top of the solicitors savings). I accept that that is how some people see us, but in my view I see it differently.
Our job is to:
- find you a good deal,
- make sure you get it,
- make it as easy as possible for you
- and to be on hand should you need us for anything.