Good morning. I have been reading this forum for a little while and thought it was time to contribute rather than simply absorb the collective wisdom.
My wife and I are in the process of downsizing from a four bedroom detached in Surrey to a two bedroom leasehold flat in a purpose built block, also in Surrey. We accepted an offer on our house in early January and instructed solicitors shortly afterwards. The buyer is a cash purchaser with no chain, which we were told would make things straightforward, and to be fair the sale side has moved at a reasonable pace. Searches are back, our solicitor has replied to all preliminary enquiries, and I am told we are close to being in a position to exchange, subject to the purchase completing in parallel.
The purchase is where I am less confident. We had an offer accepted on the flat in mid January and the seller’s agent has been, to put it charitably, intermittent in their communication. Our solicitor raised the initial enquiries on 24 January and we have had precisely one response, which addressed two of the eleven points raised and ignored the rest. The management pack from the freeholder has not arrived. Our solicitor says this is not unusual for leasehold transactions but I am conscious that we have a motivated buyer sitting behind us who will not wait indefinitely.
Two questions, if anyone has been through something similar. First, is it reasonable at this stage (nearly four weeks since enquiries were raised) to ask our solicitor to contact the vendor’s solicitor directly rather than going through the agent, or is that considered poor form? Second, has anyone had success chasing the management company for the LPE1 independently, or is that strictly the seller’s solicitor’s job? I am aware that the seller typically pays for the pack but I would happily cover the cost myself if it moved things along.
Any thoughts gratefully received.
Your solicitor should already be talking to the vendor’s solicitor directly, that is literally how conveyancing works. The agent is not a relay station for legal enquiries, they are there to hold hands and chase when things go quiet. If your solicitor has been routing everything through the agent rather than writing to the other side’s solicitor, I would be asking some pointed questions about why. When I sold my flat the agents were copied on correspondence as a courtesy but the actual substance went solicitor to solicitor from day one. The LPE1 is the seller’s solicitor’s responsibility to order from the management company, and some management companies are glacially slow, but four weeks with only two of eleven enquiries answered suggests the other solicitor is either snowed under or not treating this as a priority. I would get your solicitor to send a polite but firm chaser with a deadline, something along the lines of ‘we have a cash buyer behind us and need to exchange by X date, please confirm when we can expect full replies’. That usually concentrates minds.
@Caldweld, welcome. Four weeks with two of eleven enquiries answered is poor but sadly not unusual in my experience. The management pack is often the bottleneck on leasehold purchases and some of the bigger managing agents treat requests like an afterthought. I know someone locally who paid the management company directly to expedite the LPE1 and it did speed things up, though their solicitor was not thrilled about it. Technically the seller orders and pays for it but there is nothing stopping you offering to cover the cost if the seller’s side is dragging their feet.
As for the agent, I would not waste energy complaining to them. Most agents lose interest the moment the sale is agreed and only perk up again if the deal looks like it might fall through. Your solicitor should be corresponding directly with the vendor’s solicitor anyway, as Frankie says. If they are not, that is the first thing to fix. A polite email from your solicitor with a clear timeline and a reminder that you have a ready buyer behind you will do more than twenty phone calls to the agent’s office 
@Caldweld, welcome to the forum and I am sorry you are having such a frustrating time. We are in a somewhat similar position, having decided to sell our buy to let in Kent (there is a long thread about it on here if you search!), and the conveyancing on the purchase side always seems to lag behind the sale.
I wanted to ask, do you know the remaining lease term on the flat you are buying? I only mention it because we looked at a leasehold flat ourselves before deciding against it, and the management pack turned out to contain some surprises about planned major works that would have added considerably to our costs. The LPE1 should disclose any planned or recent Section 20 works, disputes with the freeholder, and the current service charge budget. It is worth making sure your solicitor goes through it carefully when it does arrive.
Also, is the ground rent traditional (a peppercorn or small fixed amount) or is it one of the escalating varieties? That can affect the mortgage position if you ever wanted to borrow against it in future, even if you are buying outright now.
I do hope things speed up for you. Many thanks for posting.
A brief update on our own saga, which may be of interest to those following this thread. Our solicitor received the management pack from the freeholder’s managing agents on Monday, so that is now roughly five weeks from the initial request. Progress of a sort.
However, the pack states the ground rent as £175 per annum, whereas the particulars from the agent and the lease extract we were sent at the outset both quote £150. The discrepancy is only £25, which is hardly ruinous, but my solicitor has flagged it as something that needs resolving before she can report on title. She suspects it may be an escalation clause in the lease that the agent either did not know about or chose not to mention, but until she sees the full lease (which she has now requested) she cannot confirm.
This is precisely the sort of thing that adds weeks to a leasehold transaction for no good reason. The information exists somewhere, it simply has not been collated or communicated properly. I have asked the agent directly whether they were aware of a ground rent review and received a reply that amounted to “I’ll check and get back to you,” which in my experience translates to at least another week.
Has anyone else encountered a ground rent figure on the particulars that turned out to be wrong? I am curious whether this is a common oversight or whether it suggests the agent did not bother to read the lease before listing the property.
@Caldweld, I would be more surprised if the agent had read the lease. Most of them copy whatever figure the vendor gives them and leave it at that. Ground rent review clauses are incredibly common on flats built or converted from the mid-2000s onward. If the lease says £150 with a review every ten years, £175 is about what you would expect depending on the formula. Your solicitor will sort it once she has the full lease. Annoying but not unusual.
A weekend update, though one that may be unsatisfying for those hoping for progress. I raised the suggestion of contacting the vendor’s solicitor directly, as has been discussed here, but our own solicitor was firmly against it. Her view is that going around the agent, even when the agent is clearly the bottleneck, risks antagonising the vendor and could complicate matters if anything goes wrong later. I can see the logic even if it is frustrating.
The management pack is now apparently complete but our solicitor has identified three queries on the ground rent review clause and wants written confirmation from the freeholder’s managing agents before she will report to us. Given that those agents took four weeks to produce the pack in the first place, I am not optimistic about a swift reply. My wife has started looking at other properties, which I take to be a negotiating tactic directed at me rather than a genuine change of plan.