Chinese Whispers – Communication, or the lack of it!

There can be many aspects of a conveyancing transaction where you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall. But, the one area that can always be improved upon, by both conveyancers and estate agents, is communication. This does not mean 100 telephone calls a day, but keeping each other appraised of the milestones in the transaction, or indeed the next hurdle to overcome. People often get so blinded by the detail of a transaction, that they forget the one ingredient that keeps the whole process together, communication.
All too often we see clients becoming increasingly frustrated when their conveyancer is saying one thing, the agents are saying another and the party on the other side have a completely different story altogether! This is very prominent where there is a long chain involved. Due to the number of people working towards a completion of a chain, it is very difficult for all parties to know what is going on all the time. Communicating the reasons for a delay, or indeed a deadline set for exchange by the other end of the chain, for example, is vital in order to keep the process smooth and stress-free for the client. As they say ‘Knowledge is Power’.
So how do we improve communication?
The 21st Century is here and the name of the game is instantaneous contact, whether by phone, email, fax or even text message. So let us use these facilities to our full advantage, so that any information that needs to be dispersed along a chain can be done quickly and effectively to ensure both conveyancers and estate agents can act on this swiftly. Delays in conveyancing are bad enough due to local searches and mortgage valuations taking a vast chunk of the time without the parties involved not talking to each other. Clients’ demands for a ‘quick transaction’ or a completion date ‘as soon as possible’ are becoming the norm and we are the people they turn to for information – we are the people they ‘pay to know’.
We also have to ensure that we are being honest with all involved. If there is a problem in a transaction, the parties must be made aware of this and how any such problem can be resolved, from both a conveyancers and an estate agents point of view. This will give the clients a well rounded picture of what is happening; they will be less inclined to set unrealistic timescales and end up feeling frustrated and angry when these are not achieved.
We are all striving for one result….completion. So let us work together in achieving this and giving the client a quality and stress-free service. It’s good to talk!