A conveyancing firm that guarantees exchange within an agreed period of time or it will charge nothing says that it is beating its own expectations.
Muve launched in May, promising vendors and buyers that it can get to exchange within as little as 25 days.
However, it has now announced that its first cases have exchanged in an average of 15 working days.
All the cases were started in early July by Muve, which offers referral fees of up to £600 to agents, and charges £1,119 plus VAT for the guaranteed exchange service.
Muve CEO David Jabbari, who helped found online firm Connext2Law, said: “I am very pleased that our first batch of MuveFast cases has proved that the guarantee is deliverable, especially when a lot of data suggests that the average timings for the sector are 180 days from SSTC to completion.
“A large part of the reason for this is the many months of meticulous planning, research, technology development, and testing that went into the product prior to its launch.
“Our big focus now is to sign up more of the larger estate agents so that they can offer these benefits to their clients and significantly improve their working capital.”
We asked Jabbari how Muve could guarantee short exchange periods in areas where local authorities are slow to deliver local search results – or in the case of Surrey Heath Council, have simply shut down their systems for six weeks.
He said: “How it works is that the various local authority timings are hard-wired into the quotation process, and where there are likely to be delays this affects that target date agreed with the client.
“We also have the option of using a search indemnity product where that is consistent with the lender requirements in the UK FML Handbook.”
Comments (6)
Please note that the correct fee is now in the article. Thank you Rosalind!
The fee is actually £1119 for the MuveFast product, not £1999 as shown. This is great value even against traditionally conveyancing services which offer no expedited service.
My firm guarantees to agree a completion date with the other party that also suits all parties in the chain and to complete on the agreed date.
It isn’t possible to guarantee anything else.
We also use the terms “seller” as “vendor” is so last century.
I have to say I have serious doubts about this? I have come across this Firm twice recently as I move around working as a Locum.
In both cases the firm took more than one month to even acknowledge or issue the contract papers. That to me is a bit longer than 15 working days. And the rest of the transaction was like pulling teeth. Experience in having dealt with them before tells me that is probably more par for the course, in which case the reality is likely that they have serious provisos and conditions when they offer the guarantee? I see no numbers are mentioned, there might have been only one or two cases met the criteria, bog standard freeholds with no mortgages presumably?
And what happens when there is another factory firm on the other side? That timescale would simply be unachievable, so are those files excluded from the offer. In which case it all sounds very selective? Presumably the initial offer is conditional on all sorts of conditions and if all are not met the guarantee does not stand?
I think the experienced amongst us can see things are really not quite right with this claim.
I have seen their sales manager posting on Linkedin as he move around trying to sign people up. Always successful he claims, never names names. Smoke and mirrors?
EW: Hi, I’m Ed Winchester, I opened up a brand new agency in June and have found buyers in an average of 7 days #gamechanger
TPG: Great…how many happy sellers?
EW: Erm….three.
TPG: How many are on your books?
EW: 27……
Revisit in 12 months and then ponder how much value for money the £1999+vat fee actually is. (BTW 15 working days is 21 calendar days so not really far off the original stated 25 days…just saying)
£2400!!!! that is quite steep. Also what happens if someone down the chain is much slower? Do you only take on business where there is no upward or downward chain?