Owning your own home

I read that your typical conveyancing solicitor is handling maybe 80 cases at a time.

Number will vary but it is a volume business, and it's not really that profitable either.

Not a job I'd want to do, especially at the moment.

This makes sense. I think it's a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" situation. I'm not a natural squeaky wheel so chasing them constantly grated on me.

@lemonade thanks very much :) noted

@Mucker not really keen on new builds and those ones are out of budget but I have seen them, cheers. All close to the cycle track in Easton I think. Are you that way?

Crikey 80 cases at a time? That’s absolutely mental.

Although with the company I’m at it seems their assistants do everything except for dealing with enquiries so not sure what takes them so long 🧐

100% this.

One of my favourite sayings - i am often a squeaky wheel

It's a balance though because if the clients spend all their time squeaking the solicitors don't actually have time to do the conveyancing!

Often squeaking in the direction of the agents makes more sense (as we talked about).

Crikey 80 cases at a time?

In most cases, at least that in my experience. 3 figures would not be unusual for conveyancing specialists. As Fox says, it's a volume business. The margins are wafer-thin, so volume is the only way to do it profitably.

Do you know if there’s a difference in the workload between initial mortgages and re-mortgages? To the layman, remortgage legal fees appear to be money for nothing.

I can't imagine they'd be that different. You'd still need a report on title and the usual undertakings. Might be a small difference, but I doubt it would be significant.

I hasten to add it's not something I have personal experience of doing. I regularly advise conveyancing solicitors, but it tends to be on very specialised areas rather than the nuts and bolts of the conveyancing process.

Surely someone isn’t suggesting that we should feel sorry for solicitors in this thread 🌚

I'm actually going to be selling my place in East London, so ... any suggestions for solicitor ? Not quite at that stage yet though

Solar panels vs Solar tiles.
I like the idea of the latter and it seems I could put them in without too much hassle
Anyone know about relative efficiency?

Tiles are more spenny - efficiency is about on par afaik

https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/solar-panels/roof-tiles

Back of envelope suggested not a huge disparity between cost of new roof + panels vs solar tiles- but yes they are expensive!

Saw an article a couple of years back which basically said, if you don't need a new roof then go with panels, if you do need a new roof, then there is not much in it and it then comes down to aesthetics. I wold guess it also depends on which way your roof is facing, if you are south to north then the north aspect is not going to be as effective as the south, so not sure if you end up with one aspect of solar tiles and one of normal tiles...

Any reccos for a good surveyor in SE London?

E, W and S pitches (and a tiny N) so should be well covered for optimisation.
Pretty convinced, re-roof was always going to be spenny.

Used Andrew at gnp structural surveys twice in recent months, he's doing a 3rd survey for us next week on a flat we've offered on and he did the survey on our house for our previous buyers.
Found them straightforward and quick.
Contact is
Szilvia Sedlak
gnpstructuralsurveys@gmail.com

Yeah, we are currently looking into adding some solar now, if I had the spare cash I would have gone tiles when we did the roof a few years back.

Yes, cheers. I need to get back in touch with him to sort out my will now.

Amazing thank you, would you mind PM'ing me an example of what they've provided you in the past? I can share my email with you

New raised beds finished this week and a new lawn. Previous soil quality was awful so top inch gone, new topsoil too.

Now to plant some things.

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That’s a proper lawn. Good efforts cutting it too!