Hastings Legal Reviews 

We used Hastings Legal to aid in our house move 2021/2022. Their website advertises them as being experts in across-border conveyancing, which was one of the main reasons we chose to go ahead with them, along with their supposed ‘No key, no fee’ promise.
Unfortunately, neither of these things turned out to be true.

Lia was our contact throughout the whole process, and it soon became clear that she was not qualified enough for the position. After an initially promising phone call and email where we were assured that both our English sale and Scottish purchase could complete simultaneously, it later became clear that this would be harder than it was made to sound. Resulting in a significant amount of stress and emails from our side to try to better understand how Hastings were proposing to proceed with our purchase.

The final blow was finding out that a large retainer had been recommended by our bank to complete the purchase, which had been completely missed by Hastings Legal. This only became evident to us a few days before we were due to exchange, at which point Hastings Legal then attempted to rectify with the bank, but only managed to cause the bank to threaten to completely withdraw the mortgage offer. Hastings then suggested we get in touch with the bank ourselves to try to change the banks' mind. Needless to say, our purchase ended up falling through on the day of completion due to this as well as the rest of our chain, something that has caused myself and my family an enormous amount of grief and stress over the last few months. This did not stop Hastings demanding their substantial fees for so-called ‘work’ that they had apparently carried out on our behalf though.

Throughout the process, we were repeatedly made to wait days for any kind of answer to our queries and told to contact the seller ourselves to chase for information rather than them do it. Requests we made regarding the house purchase were ignored. We made recurring attempts to call Lia and were consistently told that she was ‘out at a business lunch’ or ‘would call us back later’, which never happened. We would later receive an email from her which did not fully answer our questions. The support we received was close to non-existent, definitely not a service worthy of almost £1k of legal fees.

Overall our experience with Hastings Legal was absolutely atrocious and we are still investigating our options in terms of their liability regarding our house purchase. I would advise anyone considering using them to avoid at all costs.

Our experience with Hastings has been outstanding. From making initial enquiries about the sales process in Scotland through to the sale of the property, the experience has been seamless. Every member of staff that we've dealt with has been responsive, professional and courteous. We couldn't fault the property or legal side of the business and would highly recommend them to anyone either buying or selling property in the Scottish borders. A huge thank you to the whole team.

Terrible communication. Almost never responded to emails and very rarely responded to phone calls. On one of the few occasions I was phoned it was after I said don't phone me but email me. Send land mail to wrong address. Charge fees for a solicitor but the work is done by someone who is not a qualified solicitor.

We have received excellent service, advice and support from all departments and staff at Hastings! We cannot thank and praise them enough.
They have guided us through the process of selling a house with excellent care, attention and professionalism. Hastings have been prompt with communications at all stages of our house sale. They have responded to our enquiries thoroughly and patiently, often on a face to face basis. Nothing has been too much trouble. The professionalism of the photography, videography and presentation was outstanding. Which had a very positive effect on the number of viewings and hence a successful offer being made. We would have no hesitation in 'Highly Recommending' Hastings to anyone!

This company was highly recommended to us as being the best agent in the Borders - and they were right. The photography, videography and presentation overall was excellent, the staff were all great, and we achieved way more than we had hoped. Can't praise Hastings highly enough.

AVOID at all costs. Hastings offer poor service at a high price, and penalise the seller for their failure. Our house was on the market with Hastings for a whole year, despite our reducing the price and with no other advice from them. Not surprisingly we then decided to go with a different agent but had to pay Hastings £300 termination fee (on top of initial marketing fees) despite the poor job. Their small print says you are tied to them forever until you pay this fee (yes we should have noticed but have never seen another agent do this, and did not dream the house would not sell). We sold with the new agent, but lost money on it after a whole year of poor service, bad record keeping and general incompetence. AVOID.

Hastings really provided an excellent service at every stage of our recent house purchase. Lia was always available and extremely knowledgeable whenever we had questions, proactively providing updates as required that meant we never had to chase anything.

This was the first time we had purchased a property in Scotland where the process and terminology are quite different. We had many questions; Lia always took the time to patiently and thoroughly explain the process at every stage.

This extremely high level of friendly and supportive customer service made the experience easy and enjoyable. We look forward to working with Hastings again in the future.

I found Irena and Kerry really helpful when we bought a house through them, thanks

There is a reason why Estate Agents are the most despised profession in the UK and this lot are a perfect example of why.
Dont return calls or emails and generally act like they have the monopoly on house sales in The Borders.
Cannot wait for the impending fall in the housing market and see the very smug smile wiped off their faces.
Absolute knobs to be avoided at all costs.

An awful experience. They never answer emails. They had not been able to provide an exact Google Maps point or a screenshot with a house to check it before the viewing, Ron has proposed to cancel the viewing instead. Great customer service!

Poor service regarding property sales and purchases, to be avoided..There are many other and better estate agents/solicitors in the local area.