Final stages of buying signing contracts

[mamalik1]

Hi,
I was wondering if anybody could help. I am in the process of buying a house the solicitor has finally got everything together after over 6 weeks even though I had my mortgage approved before , and they have now asked me to come down and sign the papers. I have all the funds in place and I will be writing him a cheque when I go down to sign the docs. He has stated that he can only move to the next step once the cheque has cleared I was wondering is this true cant he just agree a completion date when I sign the documents?
thanks

[JustinN]

Most solicitors will not draw their cheque (for the deposit money) until they have cleared funds. IE: If their client gives them a cheque, the solicitoirs will norfmally want to clear the cheque before drawing against it

I feel this shows a sad lack of trust but there you go. For another thing, I think a client would be very stupid to bounce a cheque for the deposit when he would be "on the hook" for the whole contract.

I would have expected the solicitor to warn you of this at least a week ago, so that you could send a cheque in advance, to clear in time for this stage. Sometimes, one feels that solicitors like to build in a delay for some wierd reason!

There is way around this: you could offer to send the deposit money by same-day electronic (CHAPS) transfer. This will cost you about £25, but if the delay is a problem it might be worth it. This is not the same as a BACS transfer, which takes 3 banking days to arrive.

I hope this helps