Avoid at all costs.
I have just completed on the sale of our house and the purchase of our new house and I can honestly say that dealing with Premier Property Lawyers has made it the most stressful process of my life.
Initially, our conveyancer explained that things would take longer than normal due to the COVID pandemic, this I understand and have no issue with, but he seemed disinterested from the outset and was very negative about getting anything done quickly. We went with them anyway due to the purple bricks option to postpone their payment until after sale if you used Premier.
Throughout the process, we started to notice that things didn’t quite seem right. We were sending numerous emails that weren’t being replied to, if we emailed through two or three questions then on the times he did reply he would only reply to the first question, ignoring the rest. This led to more emails being sent and us getting frustrated.
This carried on throughout the whole process, it was a horrible, stressful process from start to finish.
We also found that mistakes were made all the way through, some of these only came to light towards the end causing a delay in exchange. A few of these mistakes are as follows;
My partner was a first time buyer and had a LISA, I was not and was selling my first house so couldn’t have a LIsA. We told our conveyancer about this right at the start, he did nothing about sorting it. We had to contact the LISA company and start the process of releasing the funds. In the end, we found out that our conveyancer hadn’t even sent off the paperwork and had ignored their emails months ago. We found this out three days before were hoping to complete, leading to some very stressful phone calls and a mad rush to try and get the funds released on time.
Time and time again I was asked to complete a LISA declaration, the first line of which states “I confirm I am a first time buyer.” Clearly I was not but my conveyancer couldn’t understand that It wasn’t my account...
When our contracts first came through, the contracts for the new house were in one name instead of both. When we rang to see what had happened we were told we must had done the starter forms wrong, this wasn’t the case and the mistake was solely on their part. We never received any apology. The lady we spoke to on this occasion (our conveyancer was off on leave without mentioning it to us) was very rude and dismissive saying this must be our fault without even looking at the file.
Enquiries that were sent to our vendors took 6 and a half weeks to come back, and these were simple enquiries. Whilst I appreciate this isn’t our solicitors fault, he only ever chased up the enquiries when we asked him to, never did he email them off his own back.
In the end, I was in contact with my buyers, and the estate agents that we were buying from. When my solicitor would contact me to say “we are still waiting their replies” I felt like I was giving him more of an update as to what was happening! Our estate agents were a god send in putting pressure on their solicitors and I genuinely feel that if it was left to our solicitor, then god knows when we would have moved.
Thankful, our solicitor went off a week before we eventually completed and a female called Sabine took over. She was extremely helpful and apologetic for everything that happened, she seemed to genuinely care and she really did get us over the finish line. If we had had her from the outset I feel like this would have been a very different review.
In the end, we moved in. But this was around 6 weeks later than we wanted. We only found out on the Friday that we were moving on the Monday. Premier were a nightmare to deal with, at times we were ready to pull out because we just didn’t want the stress.
I will never use Premier Property Lawyers again, they were rude, horrendous customer service and sloppy work. There are so many better firms out there and I would strongly advise you to keep on searching.