How to avoid using a bad solicitor – Part Two

When buying property, everyone on your team plays an important role but often buyers overlook the pivotal contribution their solicitor or conveyancer makes to a successful sale or purchase.

Solicitors usually get a better position on the team when you’re selling property because they’re required at the start of the process to prepare your sales contract.

Unfortunately, most buyers leave the selection of their solicitor to the very last minute, or will focus on trying to find the cheapest possible service.

Whether buying or selling – but more crucially when you’re buying – a skilled solicitor or conveyancer can make or break a successful sale or purchase.

Before I launch into the examples of appalling service, It’s important to remember there’s many more good service providers than there are bad ones.  Your job though is to make sure you select the great solicitors and avoid the bad – even if you’re half way through your purchase.

I have been buying property for over 25 years, and it still shocks me when I come across crappy solicitors who are either too incompetent or have egos so huge that it seems they’re happy to see their clients’ deals fall through

Throughout my career I’ve bought a lot of property, so I’ve seen a wild range of crazy behaviour – once when I was buying a property of my own, the solicitor asked me why I would want a copy of the purchase contract (!!).  But that’s a story for another time and hopefully that guy has now left the profession.

I have just completed two purchases where the solicitors involved did everything possible to kill the deal for their clients. Their actions cost my clients thousands of dollars in money they didn’t need to spend, caused considerable amount of stress, and wasted time for everyone involved in the purchase.  Warning . .this is a long post, but the lessons will be worth it.

I covered off the first example a couple of weeks ago . .you can find the first story here . . and the second example is outlined below.

Second purchase

In this situation – which is more common for me – it was the other side’s solicitor causing the problems.  The solicitor on our side was fantastic . . but the seller’s solicitor was completely unprofessional and slimy.

The property we were interested in buying for our client – we’ll call him Brad – had been sitting on the market for quite some time.  We had been watching it as the initial guide price was too high and didn’t represent value.

By the time the property had been on the market for ten weeks, the guide priced had been dropped by $200,000 after looking like it was under offer a couple of times.  It was a great opportunity at the new guide price and was exactly was Brad was looking for, so we decided to make a play for it. 

All was going fine with the initial negotiations with the agent, but the minute we started interacting with the solicitor it was clear where the problem was.  I’m guessing this dud solicitor was the cause of his client missing out on a sale in the earlier weeks of the campaign.

Right from our very first interaction with the vendor’s dud solicitor, after the agent advised him that the vendor had accepted our offer, the dud treated us with nothing but disdain.  Even the wording in the email exchanges – before we had even made any requests – the dud presented as as a bully, power junky and jerk. 

It started with this dud’s behaviour though.  He just wouldn’t respond to our solicitor’s initial emails.  When you submit and offer, you need to move efficiently so you can compete your due diligence within a set timeframe.  The longer the seller’s solicitor takes to respond, means less time our side has to review the information and try to gather more insights.

This dud’s tactic was to just not respond to any questions.  Our solicitor sent an email, then followed up the next day with a call but . . no response.  We followed up with another email, then asked the agent to request some action advising that if we couldn’t get a response we may need to withdraw.

The agent confessed the solicitor was . . hopeless. The dud had continuously done this with other offers.  So we leaned in and our solicitor had to burn time politely requesting a response.

The vendor’s dud solicitor continuously spelt our solicitor’s name incorrectly . . multiple ways . .not just one incorrect way, and the dud picked at typos that weren’t actually typos.

When the dud did respond, he gave misleading and incomplete responses or fobbed our solicitor off advising the basic information we requested should be obtained from another source. 

For example, we requested confirmation that the current property manager had collected bond from current tenants. The dud responded “this is of no importance to the buyer at this stage of the process”.  When our solicitor confirmed it was – actually – important to the buyer [because how would the dud know what was important to the buyer] the dud advised that the selling agent had responded to this request.  A quick look through the email trail made it clear to see the agent hadn’t responded.

Despite all the delays and blocks and attitude from everyone on the sellers’ side, we managed to get to a point where we were happy to progress, but the building and pest inspection revealed some issues that really couldn’t have been identified during the normal viewing process.

We did what we normally would do in this situation, and asked that the seller fix the issue or provide a discount and we would address the matter after settlement.  The solicitor’s response was as follows . .

“This is the complications of using a buyers agent to buy property.  Nevertheless the principal still remain the same, you buy what you see.  We doubt very much that the vendor will agree to either repairing or reducing the contract price by your requested amount.”

There is no persuasive argument to suggest that the vendors should accept your purchases conditions.”

Now . . . don’t get me started on the fact the dud couldn’t even compose correct sentences.  I was being copied into all the communications, and my head nearly blew off when I saw this. 

Not only had this creep wasted hours and hours of precious time during the cooling phase and actually ran interference to mess around with the conduct of our due diligence, but now he was trying this school boy tactic of taking a couple of pot shots.

Thank goodness I have plenty of experience with this situation, and could see the email wording for what it was – just bait language to get a rise out of me or our solicitor.  Of course, I needed a ‘what a jerk’ conversation with our solicitor, but we both held it together and didn’t respond to the bait.  We just didn’t respond at all and waited for the solicitor to come back with the vendors’ response.  Which he did  . . with the discount : – ).

Just for the record, there IS a persuasive argument for making the request and the creep solicitor actually trapped himself.  The whole POINT of having a building and pest inspection is to assess areas a buyer cannot see during a five minute viewing of a property.  We made our offer on what we could see during the initial viewings.  When the inspector visited the property he COULD see other problems . . which was the reason for the discount request.

Of course, the creep’s wording was designed to tick people off and bait them to respond with equally inflammatory language.  But I’ve been to this show before, so I knew to keep my thoughts to a summarised verbal update to Brad, supportive chats to our side’s solicitor, and knew I would have the opportunity to write it all out here.

Long story short (and believe me this was a very long, tedious negotiation) . . we got what we wanted because we were in the right, and the seller wanted to sell their property.  Little does the seller know that his creep solicitor probably cost him around $200,000 off the sale price of his property.

I would love more than anything to tell you the names of these too very unprofessional professionals covered by the two scenarios I have summarised, but if they’re reading this story they’ll know exactly who I’m referring to.  They’ve got my name, and more importantly I have theirs.  Let me know if you want me to give you the names of at least two solicitors you should avoid . . like the plague.

On a brighter note though, there’s plenty you can do to avoid the bad solicitors and find the good ones. Check out the list below.

How to choose a good one

1. Make sure they have experience in property sales and purchases – at least two years of experience would be an absolute bare minimum.
2. Get their mobile number or ensure they have someone who will respond to your calls at any time of the day – within reason of course, you’re not going to be their only client.
3. Ask them what will happen if you have to take action at short notice – because that’s the reality of the property market at the moment – do they have the capacity to help you if a deal presents itself at short notice.
4. What is their process for submitting requests – can you speak to their admin person or does everything have to be signed off by the solicitor.
5. Will they work as a team with your other service providers like your buyers agent, broker and accountant.
6. This tip is more of an observation than a question you can ask – Are they focused on making the deal happen for you or do they give the impression they just want to churn through as many deals as possible and fob you off to ‘the assistant’.
7. Ask about their fees – as a guide . . anyone charging less than around $2,000 is probably not going to give you the time and support you really need so expect to pay for a good professional’s time, but if you read the above examples you’ll know finding a good solicitor will absolutely be worth it.

About the author

Debra Beck-Mewing is the Editor of the Property Portfolio Magazine and CEO of The Property Frontline.  She has more than 20 years’ experience in buying property Australia-wide and has extensive experience in helping buyers use a range of strategies including renovating, granny flats, sub-division and development. Debra is a skilled property strategist, and a master in identifying tailored opportunities, homes and sourcing properties that have multiple uses.  She is a Qualified Property Investment Advisor, licensed real estate agent and also holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Business. As a passionate advocate for increasing transparency in the property and wealth industries, Debra is a popular speaker on these topics.  She is also an author, podcast host, and participates on numerous committees including the Property Owners’ Association.

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Disclaimer – This information is of a general nature only and does not constitute professional advice.  We strongly recommend you seek your own professional advice in relation to your particular circumstance