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Technology is not the answer: it is a tool only and the only way to spend up the processes for practitioners to (1) know what they are doing and (2) get on with it. My wife recently sold my deceased in-laws' property to first-time buyers. As a practitioner myself (but not doing the job myself), a complete pack of property documents including replies to enquiries was sent to the solicitors acting which they lost for over a month, with further time lost having additional enquiries raised which had already been dealt with or were totally inapplicable. At no time did the solicitor give any idea of what the process would be or give any advice or progress reports. The buyers' lawyers insisted on a completely unnecessary indemnity policy and held the process up for weeks regarding that, blaming the lender. The completion date of which we were notified was wrong by a week from what the buyers were told. In our area local authority searches take six days and the others are available in hours. The buyers' mortgage offer was issued in three weeks. There is no reason why this sale should have taken more than six weeks and took just short of five months. As a practitioner I can give countless examples of similar events plus awful lying to get a quick exchange (an agent told me a party in the chain had to have an urgent heart operation which was not the case: I spoke to the wife of the chap in question who rang me to find out why my clients suddenly wanted a quick exchange which also wasn't the case as they were out of the country). What we need is professional people doing a proper job. This would also reduce fees.

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