To be absolutely furious with house seller

[ChagSameachDoreen]

Our house sale/purchase has been limping along for a fucking eternity (November 2020, to be precise).

We offered on a property in February 2022 which was finally accepted. Took the seller an age to find an onward purchase, but luckily our buyer (young, first-time) was willing to wait.

We had a completion date set for September 12th - perfect, as our buyer's mortgage offer expires end of Sep, and we have religious holidays starting on Sep 24. I was just waiting for confirmation to book a removal company.

Today my solicitor calls and says there's a hold up. The title of the house can't be transferred to me yet, as the seller's ex-husband's name is still on it. Since she doesn't speak to him anymore, it has to go through the courts, and nobody has even the vaguest clue when it might be completed.

ONLY NOW THIS HAS COME UP?

I am fucking raging.

Has anyone been in a similar situation, and if so, how long did the courts take to remove the other person off the title?

I had an offer accepted on a probate house and the Estate Agent then found out the dead owner was very much alive and his children did not have the right to sell. I'm never surprised at the incompetence of 'professionals'.

OP, as a PP has already asked, is the ex actually still a co-owner or is he just still named on the deeds and it needs to be updated by the Land Registry? If the latter, the picture might not be as bleak as it the LR update could be processed within weeks.

If the ex actually still owns the property then I would do as advised: move into rental, continue with your sale and look for another house. You will be chain free so in a stronger position. Renting is a massive hassle (I did it when my buyer wanted to move quickly to benefit from the Stamp Duty holiday) but realistically if the courts have to get involved you are looking at months if not over a year to resolve this.

Thanks for this information. From what I can gather, it is going through the courts at the moment.

I will see what the sales progression lady says when she calls me soon after doing some digging.

I'm very prepared to pull out.

I'd say this is on the sellers solicitor. He/she would have seen immediately on looking at deeds that property was in joint names and either ensured he/she was instructed by both parties or asked for details of the solicitor acting for ex. If your solicitor has seen the deeds, had a draft contract from the other side and had his enquiries answered, there's no way he'd have known about this. If some of this hasn't happened, there's no way the suggested completion date of 12 September would ever have happened as there wouldn't have been time.

I would be giving your solicitor a big kick up the behind. Both yours and the sellers solicitors have really dropped the ball there!
I would suggest looking for somewhere else and I'd also be telling the solicitor that they can conveyance for free on it.

Did your solicitor or estate agent explain how neither of them noticed this till now?

They might well have withheld the info
but of course OP solicitor should have found out

my solicitor said to me that she was seeing unprecedented levels of incompetence in the market earlier this year, but even so, I would be surprised if the sellers solicitor didn't know.

I'm waiting on a response to this very question! Sounds very much like utter incompetence.

What fun, eh? 😆😩

How could she possibly think that??

It’s down to your sellers solicitor to identify their client and get instructions from both sellers … it’s more on them than your own solicitor . Try to work with your solicitor on this one

That's just not correct. Depends on the type of application, if there is another application which has priority, if a requisition is raised, how busy the LR is.

Very similar situation happened to us but the solicitors managed to sort it out as they said all the court fees etc would come out of the house sale and he was waiting for the money himself so didn't want that to happen. It was just a very stressful few days in the end as they negotiated it all and he backed down. Hope something like this might be sorted out for you, op.

FFS OP!

I suspect you need to ready yourself emotionally & logistically to pull out of the purchase, AND sack your conveyancer.

Belated congratulations on your pregnancy, I hope all goes smoothly as can be with birth plans etc - it must be discombobulating at the least to feel so unsettled. YANBU to be bloody livid.

Having worked for conveyancing solicitors before, pull out now. Your solicitor hasn't been doing much work and this should've been flagged up months ago.

Get an old school solicitor for your next house purchase, hope this isn't one of those cheap conveyancing firms up North with paralegals headed by a solicitor as they are rubbish generally.

How did your solicitor not pick up on this when you instructed them (who would have at that point ordered the title from the Land Registry)? How the hell did Seller's solicitor not pick up on this equally? If ex-husband is on title it will be there. Shocking.

Agreed re this but a good conveyancing solicitor on the purchasing side (forget exact name) will be chasing the vendors solicitors and will be on them at every stage if there's a hold up or other issues. A bad or mediocre solicitor won't do this.

Generally a sale/purchase should take 6-8 weeks, maybe more if issues like these. But both solicitors should be in touch on a regular basis and progressing this. I'm surprised both estate agents haven't been on the phone chasing this and their commission as usually they would be!

Please withdraw.

I'd be tempted to contact the body that regulates solicitors, but withdrawal might be enough. If they knew about the religious holidays when the date was set (your religion is your own business and they may not, fair enough), I know what I would be saying in their shoes.

Your solicitor is incompetent. From recent experience, I would pass on that house and expect NO charges at all. Your solicitor should consider themselves lucky they aren't sued! Disgraceful.

Unfortunately things do slip through, and this 'almost' has. I think the Seller knew her ex-DH was still on the deeds but hoped if it came up that it would be an easy to resolve issue, not a year to go through Court, etc. If her ex-DH has been refusing to sell (that's my guess anyway) then I think she thought she'd risk it. Worse things have gotten past conveyancers in the past, which is why I always insist on a Solicitor than a conveyancer. Especially one that doesn't use their office junior to do the paperwork because this is precisely the thing that would get missed out when that happens.

Good luck OP!

This has been going on since November 2020. Bloody even at Britain's snail pace that's bad. You deserve a medal for putting up with that alone.

Thanks for all the advice and good wishes!

Half of me is hoping that it will be sorted and we can move soon.

The other half has mentally checked out and is looking at other properties, plus getting some recompense from the conveyancer.

That's just the full process of us putting the flat on the market! It took AGES to get any interest, but we stayed put and waited instead of dropping the price. We eventually had an offer, who subsequently pulled out. Then we got another offer in Jan 2022. We made our offer on the house in February 2022, and only now were coming to completion when this issue arose.

Given the way the market is headed, you need to complete on your sale and move into rented

I wouldn't do this at all, what if interest rates rise and you struggle to buy due to new mortgage costs? If you can't move I would stay put. Sucks for your buyers but no way would I sell without somewhere to go to at the moment

Yeah I think we will stay put at the moment if we have to pull out.

DD has a school place in the area we want to move to, as it's a Jewish school so being outside the catchment isn't an issue.

I guess we will wait until DS is born to think about starting the process again.

Ugh.

On the plus side you should get more for your flat now, if your current buyer isn't willing to hold on. What a cock up - please go after your solicitor and potentially your EA too for some recompense.

We have found in the past two years most certainly, that we've had to be on the case ALL the time with the conveyancers/solicitors on our sales.
It has appeared to us there's been no sense of urgency, commitment to proceed speedily, effective communication in the sales we've completed.
Whether it's been the workload, lack of staff or Covid duress. Always an excuse for hiccups.
And what's with the latest ruse to exchange and complete on the same day???

And usually happens on a Friday so the mortgage funds are retained in the solicitors account over the weekend....thus enabling the funds to be used on the markets to earn interest.