bit worried about the vendor, would you be worried?

[theshrewdavenger]

We're buying a flat, and the agent has been dealing with a man, Mr X. as the vendor. It's been let out, and we're buying it as a BTL. It emerges that the owner on the registry is a woman, Mrs. Y. I asked the estate agent whether he had met Mrs. Y and he said no, but that the Mr X is apparently her husband. He did not ID her. Her solicitors are useless in every way, so if they have ID her, they haven't told us they have.

My solicitor's point is that Mr X could be anyone and that property fraud is growing, particularly with BTL sales which are quite impersonal.

I've checked on 192.com and she exists, at the address given, and her job checks out. Would I be very out of order to call her up at work and confirm she is selling her flat?

same as my answer on the other thread. You don't do it, you get the professionals that work for you (the solicitor) to do it.

tell your solicitor to pass on that unless the vendor is properly ID checked, the transaction is not proceeding.

if her solicitors are useless, not your problem. You wouldn't buy a second-hand car without checking ID, so don't do it with a flat!

Her solicitors will almost certainly have ID'd her; I worked in high street solicitors for donkeys years and you weren't able to open a file on the system without receiving and checking ID, and the conveyancers were even more twitchy about ID than anyone else as most of the professional negligence claims against solicitors are linked to conveyancing/mortgage issues.

As Special Subject says, put the ball back in her solicitor's court, it's not up to you to have to do their job for them.

Thanks mumblechum. The problems all begin with her solicitor who doesn't respond to any of my sol's queries, or only partially, and late. Hopefully they have all the info and will pass it on eventually. They seem to be a well-established company in a small town, so hopefully just fusty not fly-by-night.

ah, the old story - the useless and half-dead solicitor who can keep getting custom because it is a small town. Looks like you are buying from fools. Be careful.

Special they are using the provincial solicitor because they acted recently in the sale of a flat in the same block and were super efficient, so the EA recommended them. I have no idea what their game is this time, because they only respond occasionally and never fully to our very efficient solicitor's requests.