It is 12.30pm on a completion Friday. I am number five in a seven-hand chain of transactions and have just been informed that the monies have not yet left the solicitors acting for the first-time buyer at the bottom of the chain. The reason, apparently, is that the solicitors still await their mortgage funds. It is going to be a stressful afternoon.


I wonder when conveyancers are going to realise that their duty on the day of completion is not simply to complete their own client's purchase, but to enable the whole dependent chain to complete as well. Is it too much to ask that mortgage funds could be obtained the day before completion, and the funds sent on their way by the solicitors acting for the first-time buyer as soon as the banks open on the morning of completion?



This may be an obvious question, but do other residential conveyancers find, as I do, that standards of courtesy and consideration are declining?



John Godwin, Brown & Corbishley, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs