Premier Property Lawyers Review

In the spring of 2019 I purchased my first home, and I did so using the services of Premier Property Lawyers. 

Selecting a conveyancer can be an intimidating part of buying your home. Where do you even start? What sort of service can you really expect? It’s difficult to uncover the truth before you commit to signing on the dotted line. And if you make the wrong move then it’s all too late by then.

I therefore thought I’d detail my own experiences of Premier Property Lawyers – both the good and the bad. Hopefully my impartial Premier Property Lawyers review will be of interest to anyone looking for a UK conveyancer – and especially those who are already considering working with PPL.

[Please note that my review specifically reports on my experiences of buying a house with PPL. While I would expect selling a home with them to be similar there are likely to be some differences].

How Does Premier Property Lawyers Work?

Premier Property Lawyers claims to be one of the largest conveyancing firms in the UK. Despite their size you’ll be allocated a personal conveyancer who will hold your hand through the entire process. 

PPL make a big deal of their online portal – which they call “eWay”. The goal of eWay is to facilitate smooth communication between yourself and your solicitor, particularly the sending and receiving documents. 

When you log you’re presented with a “dartboard” which represents the steps involved in buying (or selling) your home. Over time, as steps are completed, the different wedges fill in so that you can see your progress at a glance. 

Your solicitor will also use eWay to alert you to tasks you need to complete. For example, he or she may upload a form that you need to complete and send back to them. When this happens you’ll receive an alert by email and SMS unless you opt out. You can always check on outstanding tasks at any time by looking at the actions section. 

Personally I quite liked this service and I thought that it worked well. It provides very clear instructions on what to do. For example, if you’re sent a form to complete this is normally accompanied by a secondary document talking you through what you need to know and how to fill it in. For more important forms you’ll even receive a “sample” form that has been completed so you can ensure yours matches at completion. 

As this was a first time buyer, for whom this was all new, I appreciated being “spoon fed” in this way, making this almost idiot-proof. 

I also like the way that almost everything was done online. I work a busy full-time job, and I’ve seen how much time other home buyers have spent visiting their conveyancer. During working hours Premier Property Lawyers would upload the latest steps for me, then when I got home in the evening I’d complete them at my leisure. The vast majority can either be filled in directly in the eWay portal, or can be printed, completed, scanned and re-uploaded to the site. 

Only a tiny minority of paperwork needs the original submitting – and this can be done by post.

For anyone who values their time I believe this can be a godsend. It also means that you can use Premier Property Lawyers no matter where you live in England and Wales. You don’t have to be local to Leicester to make use of their services.  

Communication & Customer Service

Communication is crucial for any house purchase. The eWay system automates much of this for you. Of course, you are also free to email or telephone your conveyancer if you’re someone who prefers to chat with a human. 

Personally I don’t like talking on the phone (a true introvert) and so I think my solicitor and I spoke less than half a dozen times. Many of those were 2 minute check-ins as the purchase reached its conclusion. Everything else happened by email or eWay, which was particularly handy as I don’t any mobile phone reception at work so making or receiving calls can be challenging.  

In general I feel the level of communication was very positive. I was kept informed, and could ask questions at will. The process moved very quickly. Yet I rarely felt bombarded with tasks – with the exclusion of the first week (more on this a little later). 

If I was to highlight one frustration it was that my solicitor had some annual leave part way through the purchase process. I wasn’t informed of this in advance, and only found out when the lack of response to my emails started to grate. It was only when I called the office that I was told he was away that week. In truth, I don’t think it delayed the process noticeably, but all the same it did leave a slightly bitter taste in my mouth. 

Excepting that one situation, my conveyancer was polite, professional and easy to work with. He was happy to answer my questions with patience, no doubt having heard them hundreds of times before. He helped me to feel confident in the process and made sure I always knew what was coming next. So my particular solicitor gets a strong rating from me. Note, however, that I can’t vouch for any other members of the team so your results may differ!

The Process of Buying a Property with PPL

As this was my first house purchase I didn’t know what to expect from the process. While I don’t plan to discuss every minute detail of buying a house, I do want to spend a few minutes very quickly running you through what to expect from the PPL process. 

Assuming you’ve received a quote you’re happy with (we’ll talk about money shortly) the first step is to complete their form that officially makes them your solicitor. You’ll be allocated your solicitor at this point, and access to eWay. 

The initial list of required actions expected of you is pretty intimidating. Form after form to fill in or read. There’s a lot and I have to admit that I got pretty stressed in the first few days. As soon as I’d dealt with one item there’d be two others added to the list. 

There are two things to say about this. Firstly, these forms do start to slow down. The vast majority of your work is done in the first couple of weeks. After that it is your solicitor that is doing most of the work.

Secondly, many of these forms are to ensure your solicitor has all the information needed to progress the purchase. This means that it’s worth sucking it up and investing some time to complete these early steps as quickly as possible. Expect to spend several hours during your evenings and weekends early on to get the ball rolling.

You can also choose whether to pay upfront for the land searches, or do them in due course. Personally I asked for these to be done early on. I accept there was a small degree of risk to this, but the search results can take so long to come back that you really want to start them early or risk serious delays to your purchase. 

Alongside this deluge of forms your solicitor will likely schedule an initial call. As someone who hates talking on the phone, I found the call pleasantly relaxed and informal. It is a chance to chat about what to expect and what was coming my way. 

The only issue I had with the initial call was that the calendar in eWay through which you book your call didn’t work. As a result I was constantly being sent emails asking me to select a date while a technical glitch made this impossible! Eventually I called their office and manually made a booking. 

Once you’ve submitted these initial forms, read all the paperwork you’re sent and had your initial call then life calms down a lot. There are still a few things to do here and there but generally your life becomes quite easy after the first few weeks. Indeed, I’d honestly say that – forgetting about all that initial paperwork – I found buying a house a lot easier than I anticipated. A lot of this was down to the systems that Premier Property Lawyers have in place. 

How Much Do Premier Property Lawyers Charge?

I hate it when I’m trying to compare services without knowing their prices. So how much does it cost to buy a house with PPL?

If I’m honest all purchases are going to depend on a huge range of factors, so you’ll have to fill in their quote form to get an accurate price.

I did just that for a number of conveyancers, and I found PPL to be roughly middle-of-the-road. Not the cheapest, but not the most expensive either.

There were a number of things I liked about the quote I received from Premier Property Lawyers:

The quote you’re given is pretty much fixed, so you’re not going to be shelling out money non-stop with no idea of when the process will end. You’ll know in advance – save for a few minor tweaks here and there – roughly how much your final bill will be.

If your property sale doesn’t go through you don’t owe anything – apart from any fees paid out to third-parties like property searches. This also helps to reduce your risk.

Lastly, the fees are payable on completion. As the house-buying process can take some weeks or months there’s a reasonable amount of time before you’ll actually have to stump up your cash. 

How Long Did It Take to Complete on My House?

Firstly a disclaimer – it is next to impossible to say how long your house purchase will go through. Once your conveyancer has looked at the case they’ll be able to give you a more accurate estimation but everything is subject to change!

At the same time, just as I gave you the fees I paid, I thought it might be useful to discuss how long it took for my purchase to go through. 

From what I can see in my emails, I instructed PPL on February 19th 2019. There were a few hiccups with this process (discussed below) so depending on your perspective it was really around March 1st that things really started in earnest. 

I then picked up my keys in mid April.

That’s roughly 7 weeks from beginning to end. Even less if you ignore that first week where there were technical issues. 

While I’m sure not all purchases go through that quickly, it’s an indication that if you’ve got everything to hand when your conveyancer asks for it, and you’re buying without a chain, then PPL can move pretty darn quickly!

Fair Warning: What I Didn’t Like About PPL

While this review has generally been quite positive, I do think there’s one “hiccup” that I should mention for fairness. 

I bought my house via the online estate agency Purple Bricks. On acceptance of my offer, Purple Bricks worked hard to try and convince me to use their recommended conveyancer – Advanced Conveyancing. I looked around at different options, found PPL and decided to go with them instead. When Purple Bricks rang again to try and convince me I told them the bad news.

As it turns out, however, Advanced Conveyancing is actually a trading name of Premier Property Lawyers. Purple Bricks therefore wanted their commission from PPL. They seemingly asked PPL to open an account for me without my knowledge. This resulted in me having two different eWay accounts at once for the same property purchase! 

I wasn’t aware that any of this was happening behind the scenes, so I had been diligently filling everything in on my original account. I’d spent hours filling in forms, only to be told that I now needed to re-upload everything to my new account, and that PPL would shut down the old one. 

I obviously pushed back, bearing in mind the huge amount of time I’d spent, and asked them to simply transfer the documents over themselves. PPL agreed to do this, but in the end it caused no end of technical issues. As I mentioned earlier, the calendar to book an initial call didn’t work. I was constantly getting emails and texts asking me to fill in forms that I’d already submitted. It was all very, very poor customer service. And all, presumably, so Purple Bricks could get their commission off me.

Sadly, this was also the time that my conveyancer took his surprise annual leave, meaning I couldn’t even speak to him on the phone about it.

This therefore became potentially the most stressful week of my life. I had Purple Bricks refusing to take the property off the market until a conveyancer had been instructed, while I had two different conveyancers (each eWay account had a different person in charge!) and no idea who I was really meant to be working with. 

Who is to blame here? I don’t really know. I do know that everything seemed to go fine until Purple Bricks started interfering. I could also argue that PPL shouldn’t have allowed a second account to be opened for the same transaction, and that they should have managed the transfer of documents a lot more professionally. I’ll leave the final judgement to you.

Of course, everything worked out eventually. I’m sure these glitches are few and far between, and are unlikely to happen to you, but I only think it is fair to mention it. 

Review Conclusion

So what are my final thoughts in this Premier Property Lawyers review? 

We’ve talked about an awful lot so let’s try to summarise. I suppose the most important question is whether I’d use them again. To this the answer is “yes”. I’ve recommended them to other people buying houses since then. 

I like the “hands-off” approach that can be managed around full-time work. I appreciated the friendly, helpful conveyancer I had. The costs were reasonable and the process was quick and reasonably painless. Despite that technical glitch early on – where I was very tempted to look elsewhere – I’m glad I stuck with it.

If you’re thinking of working with PPL then one final piece of advice I’d give you is to buy yourself a cheap printer/scanner from Amazon. I think mine cost less than £50 at the time. It will make your life so much easier for processing all the necessary documents – especially in the early days. 

Have you ever used PPL? What were your experiences? Why not leave your questions or experiences in the comments section below for other visitors to benefit from?