The reason this page exists is that, yes, @10,000 families per month don’t get the keys to their new home until horrendously late in the day, and another 20,000 – 30,000 do not get their keys until well after the stated time in the contract. It can make moving day miserable.

If you sit back, and blindly believe the ‘professionals’ are working diligently to ensure you have your keys to the new home by @1pm, then you will be the customer who has horrendously late key release. This page is here to help you, and us. We both want to make sure we have a great move, so please, read on.

What could be a straight forward smooth day resulting in a non knackered you being moved in well before 5pm, frequently becomes a stressed, tired family not being moved in until well past 7pm, and still with it all to do in terms of getting straight, getting beds made up…….oh, and maybe you’ll find the time to eat, maybe not.

Not what any of us want.

From @11:30 start ringing your solicitor every 20-30 minutes without fail. The question you need to ask first :

‘Has my money for my home landed in your client account yet?‘  It’s the only way of making them check. Some solicitors just don’t even bother checking until the afternoon. You must make them check. It is a HUMAN process, not an automated one. It requires human input.

Next question from you, to your solicitor :

‘Will you, and how will you, chase the funds on to ensure there is no delay in the receiving solicitor ensuring I am authorised to have keys?‘

(*scroll right to the bottom of this page for a busted myth about funds transfer)

You must chase, at least once every 30 minutes. Do not let time pass by in their office, because it will – quickly! CHAPS transfers are not like you will be led to believe. When you scroll down you’ll learn why.

Estate agents are reactionary to the solicitors waiting for info, Legal Privilege prevents solicitors sharing information with estate agents, no matter what they say! If the solicitors office are slow, it’ll be even slower through the agents. Once you know funds are moving you need to chase, every 20 minutes if not every 15, and chase the agent acting for the home you’re buying : ‘Have you heard yet?‘ and ‘Have you chased yet?‘

‘The time in my contract is 1pm*, where are my keys?, Why haven’t you been authorised to hand them to me yet?‘

*most of the time, the time in the contract for sale / purchase is 1pm.

We wish it were the case that everybody we know you are paying a combined total of thousands of pounds to, was working as fast as they can to make your day go great; however, they’re not. Sorry.

I’m writing this only a few days after a situation where a local solicitor we know well sent her clients funds at 12:30, it was another FOUR HOURS before the combination of receiving solicitor and estate agent acting for their purchase, handed over keys. The customers were beyond stressed and annoyed.

We do not want this to happen to you – we really don’t.

Good Luck and remember, we’re on the same side, trying to achieve the same thing.

Matt

*I promised to bust a myth, here goes

CHAPS transfers are real-time.

This is a fact

Therefore any notion or suggestion from, well, any solicitor about ‘waiting for funds transfer’ or ‘it’s the banks delaying it’ well, that is most likely absolute horsepoo.

A CHAPS transfer is, from account to account faster even than VISA, Fasterpayments or BACS. It’s immediate. You’re likely wondering what the source of my information is, afterall how could the employee of the moving company be writing this in direct opposition to what the learned professionals hint, and for some blatantly lie to their clients about. Well, my source is the Bank of England. The actual entity through whom your money travels. Yep, the BOE.

What the ‘professionals’ might mean when, on moving day they trope out the usual rubbish about money not landing is this;

Well, our accounts department haven’t yet looked in our client account. They might be doing other things, on lunch, browsing facebook, or simply in a meeting. The money is quite possibly there, all tucked up nice and warm but I can’t authorise key release / hand over as they haven’t sent me an email yet to confirm. Plus don’t forget, I’m quite busy so even when they do eventually email it might be another 30minutes before I read it…..So, you may well have to sit in your car homeless for three hours because our internal procedures are so damn selfish it takes us that long to enact confirmation of something that takes less time than its just taken you to read this.

So, the next time you hear of somebody sat in their car for hours because ‘the funds haven’t landed yet’ just remember this.

If any Conveyancer or Solicitor wishes to take true umbrage at what I have written (yes, I’m aware this page gets passed around regularly) then by all means call or email to berate me. We both know however you won’t be able to prove me wrong.

So, customer of M&G, thanks for getting this far now scroll back up and click on the link for where you should be and when on moving day.

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and the CHAPS evidenced I mentioned....Clicky Clicky Linky