DIY Conveyancing

[DavidO]

Morning All….

 

Does anyone have experience of, or any opinion on, DIY conveyancing for plot purchases?

[JohnMo]

31 minutes ago, DavidO said:

Morning All….

 

Does anyone have experience of, or any opinion on, DIY conveyancing for plot purchases?

Really wouldn't do it myself,dip hands into your pocket and pay for a professional service.

[Alan Ambrose]

Depends on the circumstances of course.

 

Being given a bit of your parents land with pp. Go for it if you fancy. What could go wrong?

 

Buying a brownfield plot for a bunch of cash with questionable access, drainage, utilities, newts, bats, rights of way, historic covenants, disputed boundaries etc? Don’t get any old conveyancer, get a land agent, commercial property specialist or someone (there are not many of them) with experience of buying that kind of land. This’ll cost more than minimum conveyancing fees too because of the amount of work required.

[Gus Potter]

10 hours ago, DavidO said:

Does anyone have experience of, or any opinion on, DIY conveyancing for plot purchases?

Very risky! If you have enough money to lose and the time to do it then fine. It's a big learning curve. If you have that much money to lose then why not pay someone that carries PI insurance and use the same float to take risks that you are more familiar with, more certain return, play to your own skills. 

 

To put this into context. A skilled trades person may charge £250-300 a day. You only need to save two weeks by taking time to understand what you want to build and that will go a long way towards covering the conveyancing. Self building / extending economically is about playing to your strengths, not taking silly risks where you could lose your shirt. 

[Adsibob]

11 hours ago, DavidO said:

Morning All….

 

Does anyone have experience of, or any opinion on, DIY conveyancing for plot purchases?

Please don’t do this. As much as I hate conveyancers, a good one is with their fee several times over. You don’t want to make DIY mistakes on what’s likely to be one of the highest value transactions you havre ever entered into.

[Gone West]

Back in the 70s when I bought my first house, I also bought a book called The Conveyancing Fraud. I thought I could save some money. After having read it, I chickened out and used a solicitor. It was an interesting read though.

[billt]

I too bought that book (still have it) but I did several DIY conveyances. It's quite a straightforward process, especially if the land is registered, which most are these days. However, i wouldn't bother now as the amount of money you save is small.

 

The great advantage of doing it yourself is that you have a good deal of control over the process, you know what's going on and there's one less conveyancer involved to muddy the chain of responsibility.

 

Conveyancers can still be incompetent, just as some solicitors used to be. One conveyancer involved in the purchase of an unregistered property wouldn't proceed unless the property had been registered, despite it being the purchasers responsibility to make the first registration. (She obviously had no knowledge of the simple procedure involved and was afraid of the trivial amount of work needed.)

[Oz07]

I don't think it's possible now on the buying side. Im going through the motions on a plot atm and the vendors solicitor couldn't even communicate with me because of law society rules. I said to the agent what if I was diy conveyancing he didn't really have an answer apart from its rare. Also the money laundering regulations are insane now I don't know how you'd convince vendors solicitor your money is legit. 

[billt]

37 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

 the vendors solicitor couldn't even communicate with me because of law society rules.

 

That's total *******. The entire point of land registration was to simplify the transfer process so that you didn't need to use a solicitor, which you don't - most of the people who do conveyancing are minimally qualified staff and not solicitors. Of course, they will still try to maintain their monopoly by implying that you're not allowed to do it yourself, but that's just an attempt at intimidation. Some of them will try to make life difficult for DIY conveyancers.

 

Yes, the various aggravations make it not worth it now.