When buying or selling a property you need someone to help you with the legal contract of sale. Here’s how to find a good conveyancor or solicitor so your sale or purchase goes as smoothly as possible.Welcome to Day 29 of the 30-Day Property Journey where over the last 28 days I’ve been giving you activities to do to become a smarter investor.
Today we will discuss how to find a good conveyancer or solicitor.
When you are either purchasing or selling a property you will need to get the assistance of a conveyancer or solicitor in order to organize your legal documents and process the contract of sale.
Unless you are a lawyer yourself then almost certainly you are going to have to hire a conveyancer or a solicitor.
Solicitor vs. Conveyancer
Conveyancers and solicitors do differ slightly.
Solicitors
A solicitor is a fully-fledged lawyer. I guess you would say and they are able to do contracts of sales and everything around property. They can also expand into other areas as well.
Solicitors do tend to be more expensive than conveyancers. However they have that extra expertise. So if things go outside of conveyancing or become difficult then a solicitor is well equipped to handle that.
Conveyancers
A conveyancer is like a limited solicitor. They are just there to manage the contracts of sale and they don’t practice other sorts of law.
Therefore, if you have major issues with the contract of sale or if your contract goes pear-shaped and you need other legal assistance, then a conveyance probably isn’t going to be able to help you. If that happens then you are going to need to hire the outside help of a solicitor.
Whether you choose a conveyancer or solicitor is up to you. A conveyancer is going to be more cost-effective but limited in what they can do. They should be fine for most contracts. However, for the more complicated ones you may need to use a solicitor who is going to be slightly more expensive but obviously has the knowledge and expertise to help you on all aspects of your contract.
How to Find a Good Conveyancer or Solicitor
#1: Talk To Your Friends
Most people in this country now have bought or sold property at some stage. Chances are you’ve got family or friends that have bought and sold property in the past. They would have had to hire a conveyancer or solicitor and will have feedback on whether they were good or not.
They may have to dig into their archives to find out exactly who that person was but if they had a good experience then that is a great place to start.
Side note: Always be careful as to the recommendation you get from the real estate agent that is in charge of the property.
One reason you want to be careful is because there may be a conflict of interest with the seller. You don’t want to use the same solicitor as the seller. Also the real estate agent will likely get a bit of a commission or a referral fee and that may taint their recommendation.
It really just depends on the real estate agent. Just because they’re getting referral fees doesn’t mean that the person they’re working with is bad.
For example I get a referral fee when I recommend people to Brad the Broker. However I actually sought Brad out and chose him because I wanted to recommend him. I had a deal with another mortgage broker and I decided to let that go in order to work with Brad.
Therefore just because someone is getting a referral fee doesn’t mean that their recommendation is completely tainted but always take it with a grain of salt just in case.
The best way you can do get a recommendation is to talk to your friends or family. Even if they have to dig around a bit to try and find the name of who they worked with, it will be better to go with someone that won’t be a dud person.
#2: Look at Online Services
Another way to find a solicitor or conveyancer is to look at online services. There are many online services that offer you free quotes for conveyancers or solicitors. I always recommend that you get at least three quotes. Although with Google you can often get a lot more quotes really easily without even having to talk to people on the phone.
So a good thing would be to just go into Google and search for a conveyancer or solicitor in your particular area or search for highly recommended solicitors or conveyancers. Get creative in what you’re searching, find a few and then try to get some prices from them. That way you can compare prices and also figure out what it’s like to deal with the person.
#3: Look at Online Property Forums
Another great way to find a good conveyancer or solicitor is to go into the property forms. We talked about property forums in Day 26 and you should have already signed up for propertyinvesting.com and somersoft.com.
If you want to find a good conveyancer or solicitor then you can go onto one of those forums and start a new forum thread. Then you can ask a question like “Can anyone recommend a good conveyancer or solicitor for my area?” and then specify the area you’re in.
You should most likely put in your state because generally conveyancers and solicitors are state-based. Then you can get some recommendations from people.
Often there are conveyancers and solicitors that are very active in the forums that people will recommend or people may have used one themselves and they can recommend that service. So if you can’t get the help from friends and family then this is probably the next best thing that you can do.
#4: Try the Website Think Conveyancing
Lastly, if you don’t want to do any of this then simply go to thinkconveyancing.com.au.
I haven’t actually use these guys myself but I was just talking yesterday to the owner of the website. His name is Chris and he’s an awesome guy so I thought I may as well give him a plug because he covers areas all over Australia.
He’s got solicitors or conveyancers in every state so wherever you are they are going to be able to help you. That is therefore an easy option. Again I haven’t use them so I can’t review them but Chris sounded like a really good guy and I would expect that you would get good service from them even though I haven’t tried them myself.
There you have four different ways that you can find a good conveyancer or solicitor. Again I primarily recommend getting a recommendation from your friends or family. If you can’t get that then going in to the property forums or searching for someone on Google would be your next best bet.
Tomorrow we are going to talk about the check that will change your life and we are going to bring a close to the 30-Day Property Journey. I hope that you have been enjoying this journey and that you’ve been doing some of the activities that we provide to make you a more confident investor.
If you need help finding positive cash flow properties then check out On Property Plus which is my premium membership website. I list new high rental yield properties every single day that I have found and chosen for you guys. I also show you the exact techniques I used to find positive cash flow properties and to research the areas that these properties are in.
Until tomorrow stay positive.