Delayed completion and small claims court

[bluebirdsong]

We have recently sold our house and purchased a new property.
We had an agreed date of completion two weeks after exchange of contracts however failed to complete on the date agreed in the contract as the funds did not arrive in time from our buyer to complete the chain on that day.
This resulted in us incurring numerous costs mainly due to extra removals.
We have been advised by our solicitor that we need to sue the buyer via the small claims court to recoup these costs.
Does anyone have experience or advice they could offer?
Things are also complicated by the fact the buyer is not currently resident in the country (they have not moved into our old property). Is it even possible to pursue this if they are not resident in the UK? They have the asset of our old property but unsure if they have any other asessts here.
Thanks for any advice anyone can offer.

Yes but you need an address for service. Also it would be useful for enforcement if your solicitor has retained account number and sort code of their bank account. Check the CPR to see how to serve on a person not resident in the UK. Alternatively you can ask the solicitor they used for the purchase whether they will accept service.

Thanks Jonny. We obviously have our old address which they are the now the legal owners of so could we still use that or would we need their address abroad?
No sure out solicitor would have their bank details.

Surely their conveyancing solicitor has their address ? They would have to for money laundering regulations. Can you serve papers c/o their solicitor? Can you instruct your solicitor to act for you to reclaim your expenses?

How much are you talking about

Their solicitor may be able to cite confidentiality Depends on the contract

Sorry Jonbb. (Autocorrect fail)

IIRC the address for service is the address that appears on the title at the Land Registry, which may take a few weeks to be amended. Your solicitor should know.

NB - check carefully the terms of the contract. If they were received on the day set for completion but too late to be sent out by TT, they may not have been in breach of contract. There are ways to have worked around this. In the olden days completion used to be by cheque.

Fluffywhitetowels - I believe we could obtain their non uk address if we need to.
We could instruct our solicitor but this would cost a lot more than going through the small claims court so they have advised us to do this instead to minimise our costs.
Our solicitor has kindly sent a letter to the buyers solicitor on our behalf requesting payment but this has been ignored (which we are not surprised about).
User - we are out of pocket by several thousand pounds.

If you recieved their funds on completion date you might not have a case.

Collaborate - will check the contract to see what the terms were but have but advised by our solicitor that they were in breach of contract.
I believe they did try to get around things by extending the time frame for the buyers funds but they were not received until approx 4pm. The person we were buying from then refused to complete as too late in the day. We were told nothing else could be done.

As pp has said totally depends on the terms of the contract
If you have a case then you will be able to sort out the service thing ok ,the difficulty is likely to be enforcing the judgment
Bear in mind you will have to pay court fees and expenses of enforcement upfront,hopefully to be recovered in due course

That’s one of our main concerns at the moment that the enforcement of the judgement will be difficult.

Re: enforcing the judgement. That's why I asked if you have the bank account details of the purchaser because you can apply for an order once you have judgement to attach to their bank account so the funds in the account are paid to you. Alternatively they have a property, once you have judgement if they won't pay you, you can apply for a charging order on their property. It is very straightforward to do, and you could do the application yourself. Have a look at the Civil Procedure Rules and it tells you how to serve them and how to enforce a judgement. Definitely worth it for a couple of thousand. You can of course do moneyclaimonline which makes it a bit easier. Have a look. If you need help, your first port of call is the CPR and practice directions. All available online.

Thanks that’s really helpful, will have a look.

I would start by looking at the amount to see if it is worth incurring costs over.
My daughter's lender did not send funds on the day they should have done and she paid an extta £60 interest to the sellers but it was no big deal as they were living abroad. Your case is different as you probably had to pay the removers for 2 days rather than one. As any money "retained" held back by the solicitors in case something went wrong that could be used?