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?

That is exactly what the OPs solicitor has done, and you said the solicitor had done nothing wrong.

Thanks Leftbutcameback

So just as I thought. An MHA restriction. But has she or the other side sought assistance of the court to deal with this? I thought she had previously suggested she had. If so it shouldn’t take long to sort, as I previously outlined.

Return to your young purchaser and ask if they can approach their mortgagors and get the offer extended (provided they are willing to continue with purchase). Then quick smart go find another property and maybe use different solicitor as I agree - your solicitors should have flagged this (unless the seller was hiding the facts). Either way you need to move on and get another property. You may get lucky and get a no chain which will be very helpful to you and your purchaser be it the one you have or another.

From my solicitor just now, reporting what the vendor's solicitor told them:

"We await to hear back from charge holder, we have requested completion of UN2 form and once received we will need to submit to the Land Registry. We hope to receive the completed form shortly."

The charge holder is the ex-partner. If he signs the UN2 form, I'm guessing the Land Registry can be changed. I've requested that they use an expedited service at their cost.

Apparently the vendor had no idea about this restriction and is devastated.

Let's hope the ex-partner cooperates.

Wow....so given you have a "management pack", the property you are buying is a leasehold property which does generally take a little more time to complete and is subject to missteps along the way.

However, saying that, we sold a leasehold flat in 3 months start to finish. But our Management Company sent out the Pack to the buyers solicitor on the same day we paid the £200 cost.
Your seller has been tardy in either requesting the Management Pack, or the Management Company has been slow in sending the Management Pack out to your solicitor.
As a previous poster said, a restriction prevents the sale of the property without agreement of another party who has an interest in that property, be it a mortgage company or like my OH and I, who are tenants in common or an/other party with a call on the funds.
Your seller should have known about this and sorted it before marketing the property.

We had the same issue when we moved in 2021. It only took a couple of weeks then, but it all depends on how quickly the courts can get his signature to agree etc. sorry to hear about your situation op

Not exactly the same situation but very similar where ex wife who’s name had never been on anything related to the house got wind of the sale and started a court case against her ex as she thought she should have first refusal on purchasing the property.
Took a year of to-ing and fro-ing and judges giving her time to prove she had funds before they finally said enough is enough and let the sale go through. It had been empty all that time.

A UN isn't the same as a restriction, but it needs the same solution (a UN form rather than an RX form, with an undertaking from the solicitor to provide it). Still not a deal breaker, in fact most lawyers would argue that UNs are weaker than restrictions. Don't worry OP, you'll get there.

We are selling our house, and when we gave the deeds to our solicitor she flagged up a restriction we were unaware of - their were two names required to give consent to any sale, it hadn’t been mentioned to us when we bought the house. The names didn’t belong to the previous owners, or the owners before them, we didn’t have a clue who the people were.

It was flagged up on 13 July and have been told today that it has been resolved. Our solicitor never really went into great detail about the process involved in getting it ‘resolved’, so I don’t know what they actually had to do, but I’m just relieved it’s been sorted fairly quickly!

Good luck with your case OP.

If you’re looking for Borehamwood area (good catchment for Jewish schools) my friend has just put her 4 bedroom house on the market there. It’s on Rightmove x

Pull out.

Don't rent whatever you do. . Sack the useless solicitor and instruct them you will not be paying any fees!

OP I am sorry you are going through this

I am very taken aback the solicitor didn't know about the charge on the property - isn't that part of the ownership checks?

I would love to live in B'wood!! We're up north in the provinces though.

Sorry but you won’t be able to buy until he agrees , I’m not selling but I’ve been battling with the courts re my ex for nearly 3 years re finance’s and Other matters courts are way behind so I would look for another house

Thank you!!

So on 11th July both solicitors knew there was a restriction?

But the vendor didn’t, and yours didn’t tell you, on 11th July?

If you want this house and can wait, you might as well, at least until you see anything else you like the look of on the market. And if your buyers pull out your vendors will have to wait until you find a new one. Or pull out, but either way you are no better or worse off by sticking with this purchase for now.

Infuriating as it is.

Ive only read the first page but this is your solicitors issue Im afraid, you need an explanation for why this has only just been seen by them

This is awful for you.

Also ask that any application to the Land Registry is expedited on the basis that a sale is in progress. The LR will deal much faster then.

I’ve not tried to buy a house from someone in this position, but I DID have to take my own ex husband off the deeds and it took from the July until the following February to get all the paperwork completed. Sorry to not have better news for you OP. What a nightmare. Your solicitor really should have picked up on this much quicker than this.

On the other hand, it COULD be the case that her ex will be receiving half/ portion of the proceeds, in which case all that needs to happen is getting his co- signature on the sale agreement.

I really hope that you can get it all sorted out fairly quickly, these things always seem to take so much longer than you anticipate when you start the ball rolling,

Exactly, I dont know why OP is so angry at the seller without knowing whether the seller has been overtly underhanded (for what reason?)

Its the solicitor and agent that she should be focusing on

Plus as others have said, I was straight in downloading the LR information when I bought property to double check myself

Crikey so your solicitor knew in July but didnt inform you and didnt go hell for leather to ensure they knew it was sorted until the day before yesterday?

And of course its not sorted.

Apparently my solicitor was only told about the restriction yesterday! The vendor's solicitor hadn't mentioned it.

I was wrong to be angry at the seller, as apparently she didn't know about it either. It's the solicitors who ought to have figured it out.