Am I right to think that DIY conveyancing is 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?


Cheers,


John

On 29 Jun, 12:48, John Nagelson wrote:
Am I right to think that DIY conveyancing is 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...

On Jun 29, 5:04 pm, " wrote:
On 29 Jun, 12:48, John Nagelson 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...

I'm not planning to buy anything, but you are quite right - I
personally don't at
present know how to do it in Scotland (although I have done it in
England several times).

I'd agree that anyone doing it should be damn sure they know what
they're doing.

It just came up in a discussion.

John

In article .com,
John Nagelson writes:
Am I right to think that DIY conveyancing is 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?

When I last used a solicitor for conveyancing, they advised
that their fees were sometimes almost doubled when having
to deal with a DIY conveyancer. Also, the process generally
took longer which increased the chance of it falling through.
[This was England though.]

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Jun 29, 9:19 pm, (Andrew Gabriel)
wrote:
In article .com,
writes:

Am I right to think that DIY conveyancing is 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?

When I last used a solicitor for conveyancing, they advised
that their fees were sometimes almost doubled when having
to deal with a DIY conveyancer. Also, the process generally
took longer which increased the chance of it falling through.
[This was England though.]

I doubt that's the sort of advice they would give in writing!

In my experience it has taken far less time than it would have done if
the DIY conveyancer hired a solicitor, mainly because a DIY
conveyancer, if they've got any sense, will maintain direct contact
with the other party (and any other parties in the chain, if
necessary), as well as with the other party's solicitor. A solicitor
is not allowed to do that; their professional rules perceive it as
like giving instructions to someone else's dog in the park - a social
no-no. Most of them don't like it either when a DIY conveyancer on the
other side speaks directly to their client, although there is
absolutely no rule, law, or convention against it, and it's a good
idea for people to keep in touch so that small problems can be
prevented into growing into the sort of big ones that can arise when
people don't know where the other party is coming from. Also DIY
conveyancers tend to reply to letters within a day or two. At least
that's how I've done things.

When both sides use solicitors, it's quite common for things to foul
up at a late stage, owing to solicitor error, without the actual
parties knowing anything about it, because problems are sorted out
between the solicitors who obviously a) have a shared interest in
getting their money, and b) do not want to do the dirt on their
brother. It's like with the medical fraternity - murder is one thing,
but bringing the profession into disrepute is considered to be far
graver. DIY conveyancers don't tend to cover up for solicitors. (In
parenthesis: it's normally the office clerk who does the conveyancing
work anyway).

The solicitors' "argument" that you shouldn't do your own conveyancing
because you aren't insured against making a mistake (or can't sue
yourself if you do) is ridiculous. You shouldn't make a mistake! It
isn't hard to do. You don't get bricklayers saying don't build walls.
Building a wall actually is quite hard, but their attitude is, if you
know how to do it, do it.

I haven't heard of a case where a DIY conveyancer causes unnecessary
delay. In my most recent sale, my buyers were two people, each of whom
had their own sale, and each of whose buyers also had a sale, and it
was definitely yours truly who pushed the pace all the way through.
Must have saved about 4 weeks. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen
that a DIY conveyancer can slow things down. But most unnecessary
delays are caused by solicitors, unbeknownst to clients kept in the
dark, who don't even see all of the correspondence. Some delay is also
caused by local councils.

John

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

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

- because one of the parties is an idiot (whether or not they employ a
solicitor)
- because one of the parties' solicitors is an idiot (but someone who
continues to employ a solicitor who's an idiot is an idiot
themselves), or
- because of some idiot estate agent, surveyor, loanshark, etc.
- because of some local council manager who's deprioritised getting
searches back quickly because he wants more staff hours spent on the
upcoming computer contract, etc.

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

Without getting into notices to complete: if they're the seller,
they'll have the deposit (or someone will be holding it on their
behalf), and if they're the buyer, the should damn well have made sure
that the seller owns the house, so they know where the seller keeps a
big asset for starters (without getting into with-priority searches).
And if they haven't got proper recourse, then they themselves are an
idiot for not making sure it was written into the contract.

What would you do when a solicitor causes a chain to collapse because
he doesn't answer a letter the same day (when many DIYers would do),
or doesn't pick up the phone and get stuff sorted direct with the
other party when only that would work (because he isn't allowed to).
The person who's lost out would currently be extremely unlikely to get
any support from either the Law Society or the courts.

John

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