Francis & Buck Solicitors

Specialists in conveyancing for over 30 years and every client is as important to us now as the first client all those years ago. Francis & Buck was founded in 1995 by Catrin Jenkins, who was previously a Partner with Eversheds in Cardiff, and Kenneth Crane, Timothy Crane and Nicholas Crane, who already had a firm called Cranes in Barry, but were keen to provide a service to their Cardiff based clients.

Catrin graduated from UCW (University College Wales, Cardiff) with a degree in Law in 1980. Catrin qualified as a solicitor in 1983 and was one of the founding partners of Francis and Buck in 1995. Catrin was previously a Partner with Eversheds Cardiff. Catrin is the Managing Partner of the firm and with over 35 years of experience in the business Catrin has handled and supervised tens of thousands of residential conveyancing transactions.

An average transaction, where the purchaser requires a mortgage and there is a chain, will usually take between 6-8 weeks to exchange contracts. Then another 1-2 weeks between exchange of contracts and completion making a total of 6-10 weeks from start to finish.

However, this largely depends on the length of the chain, generally the more parties there are in a chain the longer it will take, if only because this increases the chances of potential problems.We will do everything that we can to progress your transaction as quickly and efficiently as possible but we cannot offer any guarantees regarding timescales - and you should not believe anyone else who claims they can!

The chain is the word used to describe all the different parties involved in a conveyancing transaction e.g. Mr A is buying from Mr B who is buying from Mr C (here there are 3 in the chain). Generally, the longer the chain the longer it takes to reach exchange of contracts as everyone has to wait for the last person to be ready.