I know you think you might know how I answer this but read on, you might be surprised. There are a few things that come in to play when making your decision.
Do we get paid by the solicitors?
Lets get the elephant out of the room first… Yes, we do receive a kickback from the solicitors, we can get anywhere from around £30 up to £300. As a firm we normally take the standard for each transaction which is £30-50 for remortgages and £100 for a sale or purchase transaction. I do not think we have ever taken more than the standard, but some brokers will do.
Why do we get paid?
There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly the solicitors want to give us a kickback for introducing the business to them. The second reason is that if there is a hold up or a delay, we can get involved.
A good example of this is where a client had been chasing the solicitors we instructed for 2 days for an answer – this isnt really on. If we make a recommendation, its something we are putting our name next to. I only recommend companies I would be happy to (or have) recommended to friends and family. In this case there was a reason in that the conveyancer had been off – although obviously someone else should have been picking up their work.
The customer sent us a whatsapp message at 10am (9.57am to be precise). I spoke to the conveyancer and then the client and they had their answer in 30 minutes.
We do not always need to get involved, but how nice is it to have someone to palm it off on so you dont have to chase and mither?
But should we use the recommended firm?
One question we always ask is “Do you have a firm in mind?”
If you are just going to pick a firm at random, please dont! Over the years we have seen some shocking conveyancers. In this scenario, I would prefer you to go with our recommended firm. Not only is there an element of control in that we can keep on top of them. But also we know they will be fine.
If you have already used a solicitors or you have been recommended by friends or family thats fine. At that point you have a bit more choice and you would like to think your friends/family would only recommend someone they were happy with. There is no hard sale from our end. We do not mind who you use, but picking a firm at random is just something we really advise against.
Is there anything else we should know before deciding?
As I was writing this post, I realised something. I have been a broker for 12 years, for the last 4-5 years I have used the same 3-4 firms. One thing I have noticed is that over the 4-5 years, my knowledge of the legal process has improved.
Because we have built up a relationship with the firms we use, we have tended to get into more of a discussion about where things are up to and what will happen next etc. Without even realising it, it has been a bit of an education. It means we can generally help along the way.
Where are our quotes from?
We use a company called Movin Legal. They are what I can only describe as a price comparison for conveyancing companies. Over the years we have tried a few companies from here but we tend to stick to the same 2-3 companies. We alternate depending on their price on the day (as this can vary) and their expertise if you have any quirks – for example high rise, large acerage, restrictive convenants etc. But you are free to run a quote here.
Summary
This is going to be a very short and sweet summary.
If you do not have a recommendation, we would prefer you to use our recommendation. But there is no hard sale and certainly no requirement to do so.
If you do have a recommendation, then you have the choice ours or whoever was recommended. This is a nicer position to be in I think.