Mine was brilliant from start to finish, if I ever buy another house, I’ll be fully going with an online portal only again
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Same here for remortgaging. Online all the way. Mojo have been spectacular in (a) speed (b) communication (c) lack of stress for us.
I get a remortgage is not quite the same as a full-on purchase, but we’d never go back to an in-person bank/broker for a mortgage/remortgage application.
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Convenycers aren’t actually solicitors proper, and you can do your own conveyenving - some people do.
During our house buying journey the searches highlighted a query about the porch at the back of the house we were trying to buy. The search claimed the porch was less than 10 years old and so required certain planning permission that our solicitors wanted to see evidence of before continuing the sale. After a couple of weeks of waiting I was losing my patience and used the timeline on Google earth to prove to our solicitors that the porch was in fact older than 10 years and therefore didn’t need planning permission and we didn’t need to keep delaying the sale. I don’t know for sure whether that was sufficient to address the concern but things did start progressing soon after.
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My remortgages generally go:
phone rings
“Hi Jamie how are you? How’s your bro/mate Chris (etc. she does all our mortgages)? It’s Annie, your mortgage is up for renewal. Here are your options… Option A will cost least over that term.”
“I’ll take Option A.”
“Cheers, I’ll sort it.”
text arrives from HSBC stating my remortgage has been approved
“I’ll diarise you in again in x years.”
And I never have to pay her directly. I tried Habito two years ago and they produced the same options, so I’m sticking with Annie all the way. If anyone wants her number, DM me*
*although I’m in hospital on a drip, so be relaxed about any response 
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Hope you’re doing okay 
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That’s pretty much what mine is like too. Quick call from the broker and it’s all sorted.
Don’t get me started. I’m going to rant. Here goes:
I had an online service with a lovely dashboard and pie chart timeline thing. All wonderful - until I realised that the call centre operatives working behind the dashboard were working on so many purchases/sales that they basically paused anything where someone was not about to be made homeless. And then their system went down for a whole 6 weeks.
Never again.
I moved to a less-online conveyancer (with excellent reviews) and wrapped up everything in a month. Oh, and the less-online conveyancer let me do everything online except for signing the actual contract/Land Registry which needed to be an ink signature + witness. So in the end I only needed to post one set of docs.
*(I accept that not all online conveyancers are as awful as mine, and some people had good experiences with my conveyancer too)
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Yes, we learnt the hard way the first time that it’s worth getting an excellent conveyancer. We just went with the solicitors next door to the estate agents, who turned out to be less than competent.
This time around we’ve found some good one’s, but it’s the snail like council taking their time finishing off the searches for the bottom, everyone else is ready to go. Urgh.
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And while a lot of it is them doing things, an awful lot relies on the other side doing as they should. You can pick the best of the best but if the other side are awful then it’s going to be sloooooow.
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Fun? Fun?!! What an optimist I was.
That was 5 months of awful. Lies, incompetence, delays and throw in some more lies and incompetence for good measure. Contracts exchanged and SHOULD BE moving next week.
Need to order some garden furniture so I can sit in the garden with a cider and relax. Ahhhhhhh
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Don’t jinx yourself again Plenty can still go wrong 
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Edited 
You know it’ll rain for the rest of the year now
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I have started this process, offered 20K over asking for a place - it went for over 25 above asking.
Just insane round here but in no rush, what is annoying is I refuse to get a flat and pay the ridiculous service charges and ground rent otherwise I would be in somewhere tomorrow.
The search continues.
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Sounds like that asking price was an absolute bargain, but then you’ll never likely know what the survey throws up. Good luck with the search.
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This has always baffled me about the English system. Up here (Scotland) the seller has to have a survey undertaken prior to marketing the property, meaning all buyers have an understanding of the value and any issues they might be buying into. We’ve just sold our flat, well, in the process of selling (offer accepted) and we accepted 15% above the home report value, which was waaaaay more than we expected. Market really is ridiculous here. Thankfully we’re not buying right away, hoping the market calms down and we can find something that we can afford 
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I feel quite lucky that I got in just before the pandemic. I remember I even got away with 10% below asking price offer!
Service charges are sadly a thing for housing estates too, as I found out. There’s no escape and it’s ridiculous. Most things have been adopted by the council anyway, so I’m paying money so they can trim a weedy gravel patch by the pavement every now and again.
Aren’t government doing something on ground rent though?
One word: money
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This was proposed here in England and Wales too, but the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, sensing a collapse in their “press print” business model (where a local surveyor could potentially be engaged to survey – and charge for – the same property multiple times for the same sale) lobbied the government and plans were dropped.
Or, as my learned friend succinctly sums it up above: Money.
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Cause buying a property isn’t expensive enough already (or selling for that matter).
Ugh.