A Day in the Life of a Conveyancer

15 Mar A Day in the Life of a Conveyancer

From the outside, conveyancing seems simple. The estate agent sends over the Memorandum of Sale, your conveyancer receives the draft contract, orders the searches, reviews your mortgage offer, arranges a date for you to exchange and complete and away you go. We have all seen in the soaps, how a character can buy a house in what appears to be only a couple of days.
In reality, this is far from what an actual conveyancers day looks like.

As we have highlighted throughout the week, there are many steps in the process when buying or selling a property and each must be accurately completed so that a conveyancing client does not face any problems in the future, either during their period of ownership, or upon a subsequent remortgage, or sale of a property.

You’ve probably heard the line “there’s no chain so we can complete quickly”. A common misconception in the property world is that when you have no chain, you can move much more quickly than someone who has two or more properties in the chain. The reality, is that YOUR transaction will take exactly the same amount of time as someone who has twenty properties in their chain. The only thing that will be sped up is the fact that you don’t have to wait for others to be ready and caught up for you to set your exchange and completion dates. So, whilst you aren’t reliant on others to be completing the conveyancing process at the same pace you are, your transaction time from start to point of exchange will be the same regardless of your position.

So, what are my conveyancing team doing all day?

The role of anyone within the conveyancing team is fast paced and requires a high level of organisation, as well as knowledge. Not only are they required to complete the technical work on their clients file from the point of instruction, up to completion, so that they can move as quickly as possible, there are also many other plates to keep spinning.
A typical purchase will have at least two people that require updating each week: the purchaser and the estate agent. Add in a chain and they could have several other conveyancers, estate agents, and mortgage brokers that want updates each week. Multiply this 70 for all the other files a conveyancer has ongoing and suddenly they could find themselves answering 28 calls or emails a day asking for an update. Team efficiency is key to maintaining good customer service and communication with clients and this is something that our conveyancing team pride themselves on.

The conveyancing process does take time and should not be rushed, particularly considering this is likely to be the most money someone is going to spend in their life! Trust must be placed in a conveyancer to achieve the end result in an efficient manner, whilst ensuring that they are acting in their clients best interest, without cutting any corners and getting the job done correctly, which is why it is important to ensure a buyer or seller appoints the right conveyancer. Patience really is key to happiness, for all parties involved in the conveyancing process.