Guide
How to chase a solicitor, for estate agents
Search for this and you get advice written for buyers. Here is the agent's version: a weekly cadence, what to ask at each stage, and the reason the generic update call almost never works.
Last updated 27 September 2026
Why the update call fails
“Can I have an update on 14 Adelaide Crescent?” asks the conveyancer to stop what they are doing, open a file, work out what state it is in, and summarise it for someone who is not their client. It produces a holding answer, and it costs you the goodwill you will need in six weeks when something actually matters.
There is also a constraint agents routinely forget: a conveyancer acts for their client, not for you. Without the client’s written authority, there are things they cannot tell you at all, and asking repeatedly marks you as someone who does not know that.
The fix is not to chase less. It is to ask a closed question about one specific thing, addressed to the person who owes it.
A weekly cadence
One contact per party per week, at a predictable time, each about one named item. Not four calls on Friday afternoon.
- Week 1 — memo out, both sides instructed. Confirm both solicitors have the memo and have been instructed. This is the week to get ID and source-of-funds moving, because it is the one stage nobody else will chase.
- Week 2 — pack and searches. Has the draft contract pack gone out? Have searches been ordered, and does the buyer’s solicitor know the local authority’s current turnaround?
- Weeks 3–5 — the quiet stretch. Searches are with the council and there is genuinely nothing to report. Chase the things that are not waiting on anyone else: survey booked, mortgage application submitted, management pack requested if leasehold.
- Week 6 onward — enquiries. Have enquiries been raised, and have they been answered? This is where files stall longest and where a specific question beats a general one by the widest margin.
- Throughout — the mortgage offer expiry. Diarise it the day it is issued. A chain that slips past an expiring offer is a preventable collapse, and mortgage problems are the most commonly cited cause.
Ask this, not that
| Instead of | Ask |
|---|---|
| “Any update?” | “Have searches been ordered, and on what date?” |
| “Where are we with enquiries?” | “Are you waiting on anything from the seller that I could get for you?” |
| “Can we exchange this week?” | “What is outstanding before you could recommend exchange?” |
| “The vendor is getting anxious.” | “The mortgage offer expires on the 14th. Does that change your view of the timetable?” |
The pattern: a closed question, a date attached, and an offer to remove work rather than add it. The last one is the most effective sentence in progression — a conveyancer who needs something from the seller will usually take help getting it.
Keep the buyer and seller warm
The silence that kills a sale is usually yours, not the solicitor’s. Poor communication is the largest single category of residential sales complaint to The Property Ombudsman — 605 of 2,243 disputes in 2025.
Send an update on the same day each week even when the update is “searches are still with the council, that is normal, next thing is X”. A buyer who has heard nothing for a fortnight is back on Rightmove whether or not anything is actually wrong.
Sources
The Property Ombudsman Annual Review 2025 (complaint categories, measured). Connells Group, May 2026, on transaction times and late-stage collapses. Causes of collapse are from Quick Move Now’s quarterly figures, which are small-sample vendor data and should be treated as indicative rather than a market rate. The cadence itself is a recommendation, not a researched standard.