Their Solicitor f***** up

[MrsGRamsay]

Long story short. We're selling our flat.

Accepted first offer over three months ago and provided everything requested by buyer's Solicitor. For some reason, in these times, everything takes ages however, once Buyer was eventually able to book, Survey and valuation sailed through and we were meant to exchange and complete this coming Friday. Last Friday, Buyer's Solicitor realises they should have raised a point in the lease to mortgage provider and everything gone tits up till provider happy to continue to endorse mortgage terms. Buyer will be homeless next week and we've lost money (Hair, aged considerably) a lot of wasted time, and potentially our next house. We don't want to re-market and am sticking with potential buyer for the moment because not their fault.

My question is, does any MNers have any advice to get some compensation from their Solicitor's for the fuck up?

There is no question of lack of transparency on our part, they've had all documentation requested for over three months and have repeatedly assured everything required from us had been received - we have email trail with our Solicitor plus any other evidence one could think of.

It literally is a case of lazy, shoddy conveyancing practice; I assume senior partner reviewed paperwork and pointed out to junior Solicitor "you ticked no there but isn't it yes?"

So fucked off.

P.s asked both Solicitors about when exchange date was and they both came back happy with that practice - I've never heard of exchange and completion being on same date.

have you suffered a financial loss? If so, potentially. But you're going to need to demonstrate that whatever the issue is, amounts to negligence.

We were on the recieving end of a huge solicitors cock up. They admitted it was their fault but they said in order to recoup any costs via their insurance we'd need to take them to court which would cost a lot of time and money and they'd probably still still manage to win. They offered us a deal on a different flat (waived fees) which we accepted.

@Hangingover

We were on the recieving end of a huge solicitors cock up. They admitted it was their fault but they said in order to recoup any costs via their insurance we'd need to take them to court which would cost a lot of time and money and they'd probably still still manage to win. They offered us a deal on a different flat (waived fees) which we accepted.

'Taking them to court via their insurers' really just means their insurer will instruct a solicitor as you're pursuing a professional negligence claim against them. Their insurers will be responsible for paying any damages it is determined you're entitled to. I work in this sort of area - not quite the same but not that far off - and I can assure you, these things very rarely end up in an actual court room.

It is not the buyers solicitor to decide when to exchange and complete but an agreement between both parties and on instruction from both clients. Both you and the buyer could have said no to this and had exchange with completion later. There is always a risk of exchange not happening on the same day.

AS correctly stated above you have no recourse against anyone as a chance has not happened. No doubt the buyer's solicitor would have also discussed the implications of a contemporaneous exchange and completion so I doubt they have any recourse either.

I get the frustration you feel. Exchanges are frequently held up. We recently thought we were exchanging every day for 2 weeks but it was held up for various reasons - mainly the buyer not sorting out deposit monies or dropping documents off. Until every party says we are ready and able to exchange then they can't

We are in a situation now where we are having to sue our buyer to get the huge loss of funds because of their solicitors cock ups. We were advised to do this because our contract was with the buyer, not their solicitor. Our buyer will then need to sue the solicitor to claim their money back. Our buyer was a dickhead though so I have no issues doing this. If you like your buyer then you may not want to do that.

Before taking it to court I wrote to the senior partner but they wouldn't take any responsibility and defended the solicitors actions, despite our sale falling through on completion day because the solicitor had failed to notify the mortgage company about something very important resulting in the buyer losing his mortgage.

Every experience I have had dealing with solicitors through out my life -and I an quite old - has involved serious errors on their part.

Bluntandtothepoint says it all, this is absolutely correct, nothing more to be said really.

@MrsGRamsay if you believe the solicitor made a mistake that could be negligent you can contact the SRA. (not the Law Society).

Exchange and completion are two separate legal acts and do not have to, or need to happen on the same day. It is nice if they do but your and their solicitor should have explained this to both the buyer and the seller

Also good solicitors cost money.

I can only offer you commiserations. Our own solicitor when we moved was equally useless.
We lived in a block of maisonettes with a shared freehold. We mentioned this at the very outset as it would be necessary to transfer our freehold share to the new owner, and get all other freeholders to sign the documentation. Solicitor insisted it wouldn't be a problem, and that they were aware of the need to involve and liaise with a number of other people.
First hitch was solicitor saying we hadn't returned something, which I knew we had.
Then solicitor kept asking for things we had already provided, or querying things that were straightforward.
Eventually we got a date for exchange, buyer was happy, and people we were buying from were moving out a few days ahead of that. We asked solicitor about completion date, and she kept fobbing us off. We needed to book removals and needed her to confirm.
After silence for w few days from her and with exchange day three days off we rang to chase up. Someone else answered her phone and said that she'd gone on holiday.
We spent all day speaking to various other people at the solicitors company to get things sorted out. Had to resend scans of documents which couldn't be located, had to ask removal company to be on standby, as we weren't sure we could move, c name frantic calls to family to ask if we could possibly stay with them if necessary and so forth.
Finally someone confirmed we could complete on the day we had intended - all good.
A week later we got a call from the solicitor asking for details of the shared freehold on our old property as they realised the paperwork for this hadn't been completed.

We assumed at the time that the person dealing with all this was a trainee. Turned out she was a senior partner.

Exchange and completion are two separate legal acts and do not have to, or need to happen on the same day. It is nice if they do but your and their solicitor should have explained this to both the buyer and the seller

it’s much better to have a gap so you can confirm removals etc once you’ve exchanged. Doing both on the same day ups the stress levels massively.

@RiftGibbon that’s awful service!!! I’d be ashamed if any of our team acted like that!

[quote Jimdandy]@RiftGibbon that’s awful service!!! I’d be ashamed if any of our team acted like that![/quote]
The worst bit was our solicitor buggering off on holiday without telling us she was going to be away, and without handing over anything properly. She was meant to phone us to confirm completion date and hadn't - and it was only us chasing up that alerted us.

Do you not have your own solicitor to advise you on the sale? Surely they would have given you the usual warnings on incurring costs before exchange.

Do you know what it is in your lease that has raised the red flag? Some mortgage lenders won’t lend at all on onerous lease terms and this is a recent thing- doubling ground rent for example...

Inexchanged and completed on the same day 30 years ago. It’s completely normal, if not usual

My understanding of deomestic conveyancing is that this is not usual - ie it’s normal for sequential exchange and completion

@Aridane

Inexchanged and completed on the same day 30 years ago. It’s completely normal, if not usual

My understanding of deomestic conveyancing is that this is not usual - ie it’s normal for sequential exchange and completion

That’s what I said. Usual and normal aren’t the same thing.

@ClarasZoo some lenders have rather specific requirements about if the remaining term on the lease isn’t correctly stated in the mortgage offer you have to tell them. Which appears to be the case here.

We bought our flat in February. It took six months and the flat was empty, and we were first time buyers, so in rented accommodation. In your situation, we were your Buyers. It was a fucking nightmare. I’m just so grateful our Sellers were so patient with us/ our solicitor. The stress was so bad - we were also told not to give notice until we’d exchanged but as the months edged on, we were in danger of our mortgage offer running out and so felt we had to give notice, because we could have been in a position of paying rent and mortgage together for one month, which we absolutely couldn’t afford!

Nothing, nothing at all was wrong with the sale. It was just my horrendously slow, and probably over worked, solicitor. She made stuff up like repeatedly reassuring me things had been done, only for her assistant to admit weeks later she was off sick. Eventually around month five, I completely freaked out, and after crying on the phone because I was so stressed with the prospect of being homeless with three young children, I insisted on speaking to a senior partner and having her taken off the case and him take over. Our vendor was so patient with us - there was a property manager who was acting as a liaison between us and he was very supportive, I guess because he could see we were pushing as hard as we could. But we couldn’t make our solicitor do things if she’d said she had done them already 🤷🏻‍♀️ What are you supposed to do in those moments, when you’re being reassured and then another week goes by. And so on and so on and so on.

We ended up exchanging and completing on the same day just to get the bastard thing done. This was a month before lockdown and we got in by the skin of our teeth! I complained and everything but think we were so done in by it all, we didn’t have the energy. We did buy the property manager a nice bottle of scotch to say thank you!

Thanks for responses and sorry I haven't followed up. I'm unwell but will read through for any pertinent advice.

I am sorry MrsG is ill.

On solicitors I am also sorry some people on the thread have had bad experiences with them. Quite a few mumsnetters are solicitors and we do try to give a good service to clients. I do not do property law. In decades of practice I have never once had a complaint. We do have a complex situation now where some firms are not solicitors but allowed to do conveyancing and it can be quite hard to check on their websites sometimes who is a solicitor and who is not and even who is regulated (your mortgage lender will require the firm, whether the firm is of solicitors or not, to be regulated) and who is not. It costs many of us thousands of pounds a year in annual fees in effect to compensate those in the profession who get things wrong - there is a compensation fund and to be regulated. www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/compensation-fund-rules/. I could do my work without being regulated as I advise on contracts etc so could just change my business to legal adviser. I suspect hardly anyone of my clients or potential clients would mind that at all or even notice. That would then save the compulsory insurance costs I have to pay too which have been so high since I set up on my own 20 years ago that I could have bought a small house with all the premia I have paid. Anyway we are where we are and I hope in this case there is a satisfactory resolution.

One big issue is decades ago there was an agreed scale fee for conveyancing charges used by the profession. You were charged a percentage of the value of the house like an estate agent often does. Solicitor fees were much higher and there was the time and budget to spend longer on it. That went and it is much cheaper or even free as part of your lender's package. In fact when our family buys we use a very thorough solicitor who charges about double compared to others but we choose to do that.

In the current economic climate mortgages can have clauses regarding employment status and maybe the need for re-confirmation on completion.

Therefore any delay between exchange and completion, when the buyer could be made redundant, could void the mortgage offer, yet the buyer would still be legally required to complete.

Therefore same day exchange and completion is logistically difficult but potentially poses less risk to the buyer. (Yet more risk to the vender as nothing is guaranteed until exchange).

OP when we were buying our current home it turned into an absolute nightmare due to the seller's solicitor. We need up having to move into temporary accommodation for a bit and the sale took months. I totally empathise with you as it's so stressful. The solicitor was actually eventually struck off due to something else that happened

@GorgeousLadyofWrestling and @Sparklyblue - so sorry to hear of your experiences and apologies to anyone that was kind enough to have responded with advice / experiences and that I haven't acknowledged because need to read through again and get brain in gear.

Thanks again to all with empathatic responses.

Update - Buyer's mortgage was reconfirmed last week and money transferred to their Solicitor.

Obviously buyer wanted to confirm completion date as soon as possible however, as much as we'd have liked to accommodate them, their Solicitor went radio silence re confirming receipt of funds and putting forward proposed exchange and completion dates; they were sitting on the money. I know it's meant to be an escrow account but takes the piss.
Also, any solicitors around to explain why completion has to be on a Friday?

In ye olde days, banks would shut at 15.30; strangely enough, this way of working seems to have carried on with reference to mortgages so if anything goes tits up, you can't get hold of anyone.

We're not going to be caught out again with exchange and completion being on same day. We lost the cost of our first removal and re-booking a slot that aligns with your requirement is difficult - they are busy with everyone trying to take advantage of temporary Stamp Duty regulation!

Big news is we've exchanged. We've always been committed our side of the bargain but their Solicitor fucked up. We've always felt sorry for buyer who had to move into expensive, temporary accommodation.

As an aside, what did you leave for your Buyers?

My DH had already sent across any legally required info (months ago) e.g. leasehold, service charge, ground rent required but he's prepared a folder and additional stuff including:

All warranties of appliances
All manuals re above
Extra halogen light bulbs
Additional rolls of feature walls', wallpaper
Bathroom tiles (ensconced under Bath - accessed through panel)
Service provider info, if they want to take on eg EE, EFG, Virgin.
A bottle of nice Champagne

We will leave flat immaculate and ready to move into.

Trying to think of anything that requires 'a knack' e.g one of my previous flat's Balcony door had to be locked / unlocked by ensuring handle was upright but can't think of anything here.

Thanks again to all with pertinent advice!

Glad you have a good update!
Not a solicitor but completion doesn't have to be Friday, we completed on a Tuesday. Most people want a Friday so they have the weekend to sort the house before back to work on the Monday.

Your package that you are leaving for buyer sounds good, would have welcomed that myself in this house but as our seller had been a pain we had no such luck. They didn't leave us window key locks, garage door key and left the loft full of rubbish 😩

Hope your move goes well

I am a residential property solicitor. As PP said, it’s so they have the weekend to get sorted. It does mean everything is busier and slower. We moved on a Monday.

I glad you’re finally exchanged OP.