Intervention/closure of solicitors - delays to property purchase

[funnelfanjo]

Due to exchange contracts today on a property after a very long and tortuous period since offer accepted (over a year!). It has been a saga, the latest delay was due to the vendor's solicitor retiring suddenly and a new solicitor taking over.

Our solicitor contacted us today to say that the sale has been paused by the vendor's new solicitor. It appears that the old solicitor did not retire, they had their practice closed by the SRA. An intervening agent has been appointed, and the new solicitor had not been informed of the full circumstances when he took on the case. He is now contacting the intervening agents.

Our solicitor has not had to deal with this situation before, so I just wondered if anyone had any experience to share on how long a delay could be - days, weeks, months...? It's a straightforward cash purchase of a property with no chain, and we were due to exchange today and complete tomorrow.

I was on the other side the solicitor I was using was closed by the SRA. The SRA appointed a firm to take over the files who worked for the agreed price, their was a hiatus of about 5 days whilst the files were transferred over and the new solicitor did due diligence to ensure all the documentation was correct and then all carried on as before.
I sounds like your buyers have appointed another solicitor outside of the SRA's arrangements and this maybe where the problem lies.

Thanks - 5 days sounds very reasonable. In this case the timeline is unclear in that cases appear to be transferred before the intervention happened, if I look at the date on the SRA website. From what the new solicitor says, it seems the firm took on cases of the old solicitor as a professional courtesy - they’re a former employer of the old solicitor so I don’t know if that had any bearing.

What I know seems to point at the old solicitor realising things were bad with their business (one person practice) and they were trying to avoid the worst of the consequences by “retiring” - and the “retiring” triggered the SRA to take action.

In theory I’m quite happy that the vendors’ new solicitor is trying to ensure process is followed and his clients interests are protected, it’s just so very frustrating to have this happen so close to the end. Your experience gives me hope that ultimately we’re only looking at a couple of weeks delay. Fingers crossed the firm appointed by SRA give the green light to proceed soon.