On Jun 29, 7:17 pm, John Nagelson wrote:
On Jun 29, 5:04 pm, " wrote:

On 29 Jun, wrote:

Am I right to think that DIY conveyancingis legal in Scotland?

I.e. that the buyer or seller of a house can act in person.

And would e.g. a seller's solicitor be guilty of obstruction if they
refused to deal with a buyer who was acting in person?

Not wishing to sound negative here, but if you don't know the answer
that basic question, would you trust your knowledge of the law enough
to do the conveyancing? There's an awful lot at risk if you screw up
- seems wiser to spend the 500 quid on a lawyer to me...

In Scotland a solicitor would usually charge several times that figure
- about 1% of purchase price for a purchase, i.e. £2000 to buy a
£200,000 house. Sometimes 1.5% for either a purchase or a sale.

Why do they get away with it? Because their quasi-monopoly, dependent
on widespread ignorance, was never broken in Scotland - something
which happened in England 30-35 years ago.

Not that anyone else helps in Scotland. In England anyone can buy
conveyancing forms for 1-2 pounds. You can also go to the Land
Registry office and come away with an Official Copy of your (or for
that matter, anyone else's) title, for two pounds, if I recall the
price correctly. You won't even get a funny look when you do so. You
can also download a copy for two pounds. In Scotland the authorities
("Land Registers Scotland" as their PR advisers told them to call
themselves) put as many obstacles as they can in the way of your doing
this, even if theoretically they'll serve anyone. If you just want a
copy as a private individual, they'll say OK, pay for it by BACS bank
transfer. As if they couldn't have accepted payment by WorldPay or
Paypal or whatever. Meanwhile of course the middlemen charging
charging up to 20 times as much flourish...being members of you-know-
what profession :-)

John