Hardman Wood Solicitors - Family and Property Specialists

No longer in business
Oct 14th, 2021

Sep 13th, 2021

Excellent service A great help to get us through selling our house. Thanks
Dec 20th, 2018

Lovely people to work with. Not flash and shiny but proper and decent.
Dec 13th, 2018

Oct16 - Mar17 Conveyancing review for 3 bedroom modern terraced freehold property. After the seller's solicitor issued the memo of sale we attended Hardman Wood's office to provide proof of identity. We hadn't arranged to see Mike but he came down to introduce himself. He showed us the land registry drawing and assured us there shouldn't be any complications. This have the impression that he had everything in hand and gave us confidence that we had made the right choice in selecting Hardman Wood. 4 weeks after our mortgage was approved I emailed to check on the status of their searches. After a week I hadn't received a response so I emailed again. Debbie responded advising Mike would contact me. From my initial email it was 2 weeks before Mike contacted me by telephone. This reduced our confidence somewhat. All the searches weren't back but Mike had contact from the seller's solicitor requesting completion for Nov 30th. We attended the office to sign the contract necessary documents and were presented with their invoice. Thinking we would exchange and complete within 2 weeks we paid the invoice the next day. On the 28th Nov there was no news of exchanging contracts. I contacted Mike and he could only tell us that the contract hadn't been signed by the seller and he didn't know what the hold up was. As I had the seller's number I made a call and found that ill health and the lack of rental property to move to meant a delay of around 4 weeks. During the next 4 weeks there was no exchange of contracts and presumed exchange and completion was moved to the 2nd week of January. I was regularly phoning Mike to keep abreast of progress and at this point my calls were being returned. Exchange and completion happened on 9th Jan. After a month we had not received our land registry documents or Chancel Insurance so I emailed. After a couple of weeks I received an email asking if we had chosen to be tenants in common or not. This had actually been clarified in November when we signed the documents at the office so felt this had been an unnecessary question. We eventually received the Land Registry document and searches 3 months after completion. My sister completed on a purchase the week after us with Curtis Law Solicitors but they had received all documents 5 weeks prior to us. All in all we felt that during the initial weeks we were not kept up-to-date with the progress of the conveyancing. We felt exposed due to no push being made to exchange contracts prior to completion in order to provide buyer protection from gazumping. Compared to my sister's conveyancing with Curtis Law, Hardman Wood were slower with searches and slower at providing final documentation. I cannot advise using Hardman Wood above any other conveyancer and feel the service we received was strictly average and could have been better.
Apr 18th, 2018