Our house is 'unsellable'

[housemovehelp]

Hi
Can anyone help me with the attached
Our house house move has fallen through as the developer rejected our 4 yr old house for part exchange
I have badgered our solicitor, contacted our local councillor and our original builder
Is it just a case of waiting and chasing or is there anyone else I should contact? Like an ombudsman?

Did this not get picked up when you bought the property? I’d start with the solicitor who did the conveyancing

Looks like the developer hasn’t got the bit where they enter into agreement with LA the road maintenance.

Is this a leasehold house?

Isn't it saying that they need an indemnity policy to cover the issues?

@Coldwinterahead1 exactly . That's what I thought, and we're using the same ruddy solicitors this time so I won't be letting that one go
It's a freehold
Solicitor did get an indemnity policy but the developer rejected it
The main problem in the end was the non adopted entry road

wasn't there an issue about developers not taking on houses as part exchanges for arbitrary reasons? Out of interest was this similar

@mumwon no they were actually pretty patient with us and could have called this off a long time ago
The new house had been sat empty over 2 months and I'm surprised they waited this long before sacking us off

Not saying it will be the same but back in 2007 when we were selling our new build house we had a similar issue. Buyers solicitor flagged up that the roads on the estate hadn't been adopted by the local authority. At the time I was working for said local authority so made a phone call and was told that they would be adopted at a certain point in the future. I advised my solicitor of this and gave them a contact name of who I'd spoken to. Might be worth speaking to your local authority and asking them if/when they will be adopting the road.

I wonder if you live near me, there is an estate here where the Parish Councillors are constantly badgering the developers to get the roads adopted properly, bits of the estate are still being built but it's been going on for years (big estate).

Did you purchase a new build when you bought it?

@CruzControl yes we are the first owners
What I don't understand though is that no one else seems to have had problems buying or selling on our estate

[quote housemovehelp]@CruzControl yes we are the first owners
What I don't understand though is that no one else seems to have had problems buying or selling on our estate [/quote]
This is really common. It's a major reason why I would never, ever, ever purchase a new build house (along with a whole host of other reasons). The issue with the roads is basically that you have a contractual right to use the developer owned roads to access your house because when you bought the house from the developer, the right to use the roads was in your contract. However, whoever buys your house from you, does not have any contract with the developer so does not have a contractual right to use the developer owned roads to get to the house.
In theory, this could mean that they could buy the house from you and the developer could tell them they cannot access the house. Obviously, they don't want to do that. So, they're asking you for an indemnity. This basically means you're guaranteeing that if the developer refuses to allow them to access the property, then they can recover their losses from you. You might then be able to sue the developer for breaching your contract with them (depending on what it actually says).
Do you know when the roads will be adopted by the council?

@CruzControl so is this the norm or is this likely to be an error made by the solicitor when we originally bought the house? As it seems odd we are the only ones not to be able to sell . I asked in the fb group for the estate and no one else had this problem , I even went knocking on doors of the people with sold signs up who hadn't moved out yet. They'd had no issues

It sounds exactly like our last house. When we purchased it as a new build our solicitor explained the situation with the land leading from our unadopted road to the registered highway, but said it wasn't a risk. When we came to sell we had five purchasers dropout including a solicitor. Even the auction company wouldn't auction it. After nearly two years, we got buyers who didn't care and we finally moved to another new build which already had the road adopted and no issues. So sorry for the nightmare you are going through. Someone will buy it who isn't bothered about the road and then you can buy.

@perfumeistooexpensive 5! OMG!
I will show my husband this as he wants us to put it on the market ourselves now but quite frankly I need a break from this sh*t for a while

[quote housemovehelp]@CruzControl so is this the norm or is this likely to be an error made by the solicitor when we originally bought the house? As it seems odd we are the only ones not to be able to sell . I asked in the fb group for the estate and no one else had this problem , I even went knocking on doors of the people with sold signs up who hadn't moved out yet. They'd had no issues [/quote]
It completely depends on the purchaser. It's very likely that a mortgage won't lend on it so you'd need a cash buyer.

The whole thing has left me exhausted
I'm going to leave it til next year
Though then I will miss out on the stamp duty pause but my sanity can't take this again for a while

Where are you in the country?

We're just about to buy in Scotland and a previous poster said this was a common occurrence

@Gorseandbroom County Durham

There must be something solicitors can do. We had an estate that’s now 15 plus years old, the road was adopted, finally, last year. Houses were bought and sold in the meantime.