On Jul 4, 3:10 pm, Huge wrote:
On wrote:

On Jul 4, 9:13 am, Huge wrote:
On wrote:

I haven't heard of a case where a DIY conveyancer causes unnecessary
delay.

My move before last. The bloke two down the chain from me was doing his
own conveyancing. He was a buffoon, with no idea what he was doing. In
the end I got my solicitor to help him to prevent the chain collapsing.

DIY conveyancing should be illegal.

Following your idea through... There are two distinct phases: getting
to contract, and completion.

1] If some twit hasn't got the sense to get to contract, that's simply
tough on the other parties. Many contracts fall through in business.
Would you apply your law to all contracts?

Property chains fall through all the time

That makes it OK, does it?

The party is the principal, and if they can't get to contract, it's no
contract, so tough, that's business. If you think you're about to sign
a contract, and the other party falls out or ****s it up, you haven't
had the dirty done on you.

2] If the twit does get to contract, and hasn't got the sense to
complete, well, his buyer or seller will have recourse.

Yeah, right.

I'm not sure what you mean. Recourse on non-completion is written into
the contract, and someone who signs one without it being so written
really is an idiot. Though that's unlikely, because most people use
some variation on a contract incorporating the Standard Conditions of
Sale, Fourth Edition, printed by...the Law Society.

The person who's lost out would currently be extremely unlikely to get
any support from either the Law Society or the courts.

You got that bit right.

So forcing people to hire solicitors achieves what exactly? Solicitor
error is mostly of a kind that you have no recourse against, and
indeed it's mostly of a kind that clients don't even find out about.

Many clients don't even understand what it means to make a contract,
and think of it as something the solicitor will tell them about after
it's happened. Why? Because a solicitor doesn't want them ringing up
at the last moment to delay or cancel, because then they won't get so
much money so quickly. The big thing that one should gripe about is
the level of understanding among people in general, which on average
is far lower among people who hire solicitors than people who DIY. In
particular, if someone doesn't understand that solicitors usually
cause needless delay, they've got a long way to go.

If you've sold a house to someone who's doing their own conveyancing
and they don't turn up with the money on the day, you _will_ be able
to take them to the cleaners (and rightly so), and if you're not, it's
your own fault. You'll know where they bank because you know where the
deposit came from, etc. If they told you they were selling their own
house, you could have downloaded the title from the Land Registry for
two pounds to check whether they owned it and whether or not they had
a mortgage, and if so, who with (that's all public information)and so
on. When I have sold houses DIY I have always done this sort of
checking-up on buyers (and further down the chain), and also, since
I've written the contracts, I've made sure I looked after myself. Yes
there have been many annoyances in the process, but this is business.

John