Dealing With a Difficult or Unresponsive Other-Side Conveyancer

A property settlement only moves as fast as its slowest link, and sometimes that link is the other side's conveyancer. Emails go unanswered for days, documents arrive incomplete, or a simple request for information takes weeks to get a response. This is frustrating for everyone involved, but it is also a fairly ordinary part of conveyancing, and there are practical, professional ways to keep things moving without the dispute becoming personal or derailing your own transaction.

Why This Happens

Most delays from an unresponsive conveyancer are not about bad intent. A high caseload, understaffing, or a firm that has not invested in efficient systems can all slow down response times, particularly during busy periods when settlement volumes spike across the industry. Occasionally the underlying cause is a difficult client on the other side who is themselves slow to provide instructions, which leaves their conveyancer waiting just as much as you are. In a small number of cases, the delay reflects genuine incompetence or a firm that is simply overstretched, which is a different problem requiring a different response.

The Practical Impact on Your Settlement

Conveyancing runs on a chain of dependent steps: contract review, requisitions, search results, loan documentation, and final settlement figures. If the other side is slow to respond to any one of these, it can push out your entire timeline, particularly if your own finance approval or a linked sale has a fixed date attached. A short delay is usually manageable, but a pattern of unresponsiveness in the lead-up to settlement is worth addressing directly rather than hoping it resolves itself.

What Your Own Conveyancer Can Do

The most effective response is almost always for your conveyancer to escalate through professional channels rather than for you to contact the other party directly. This might mean a formal letter noting the specific deadlines being missed, a phone call to the principal of the firm rather than the individual handling the file, or setting a firm date by which a response is required before you consider your own options. Keeping a clear written record of requests and response times matters here, both to demonstrate good faith on your side and to support any formal complaint if the situation does not improve.

When It Starts Affecting the Settlement Date

If unresponsiveness genuinely threatens your ability to settle on time, your conveyancer can issue a formal notice to complete, which puts the other side on clear notice of the consequences of further delay. This is a more serious step and is generally reserved for situations where informal escalation has already failed. It is closely related to the process covered in our guide on dealing with a delayed settlement, since an unresponsive conveyancer is one of several possible causes of a settlement date slipping.

Making a Formal Complaint

If a conveyancer's conduct goes beyond ordinary slowness into genuinely unprofessional territory, missed statutory obligations, unreturned trust funds, or a consistent failure to communicate, there are regulatory bodies in every state that license and oversee conveyancers and settlement agents. In New South Wales, for example, conveyancers must hold a licence, and complaints can be raised through the process set out on the NSW Government's conveyancer licensing page. Western Australia uses a similar framework for settlement agents, described on WA Consumer Protection's settlement agents page. Each state has its own equivalent regulator, and a formal complaint is usually a last resort rather than a first step, reserved for genuine professional misconduct rather than ordinary slow communication.

What You Can Do in the Meantime

While your conveyancer manages the professional relationship, there are things you can do to protect your own position. Keep your own paperwork, finance approval and any special conditions on track so you are not the cause of any further delay yourself. Avoid contacting the other party or their agent directly to vent frustration, since this can complicate the negotiation and is best left to the professionals managing the file. If you are managing a related sale and purchase, tell your conveyancer early so they can factor a possible delay into how they manage both transactions.

It also helps to ask your own conveyancer for regular, honest updates rather than assuming no news is good news. A short check-in every few days during the settlement window gives you visibility over whether a delay is minor and expected, or whether it has genuinely stalled and needs to be escalated. Real estate agents involved in the sale can sometimes apply useful pressure of their own, since a delayed settlement affects their commission timing too, though this should never replace your conveyancer's formal correspondence as the main way the issue is tracked and resolved.

Choosing a Conveyancer Who Communicates Well From the Start

You cannot control who acts for the other side, but you can control who acts for you. Choosing a conveyancer with a track record of responsive, proactive communication for your own residential purchase or residential sale reduces the number of things that can go wrong on your side of the transaction, and gives you a much stronger position if the other side needs to be chased or escalated against. It is a reasonable question to ask any conveyancer before you engage them: how quickly do they typically respond to the other side, and what do they do when a matter stalls. A confident, specific answer is usually a good sign of how your own settlement will be managed if something similar happens on your file.