Mortgage cashback not received, who’s misunderstood?

[Ginbutholdthetonic]

We took out a mortgage with TSB that offer a £500 incentive cashback.

we’ve enquired about this now we’re moved in and our mortgage advisor confirmed that TSB release the cashback at the same time as the funds. Our solicitor is saying we have received it in the mortgage funds. But we haven’t had anything?

solicitor said it’s because the mortgage amount was £98,885, but was sent £99375 by TSB - therefore it’s been paid into the house I’m assuming?

however on our paperwork and mortgage illustration it quotes the mortgage currency loan to be repaid is to the sum of £99375.

so if we’re repaying £99,375 .. that is not cashback, surely?

can anyone help clarify. Maths is not my strong point at all!

If your mortgage illustration says you’re repaying £99,375 then that’s how much mortgage you’ve taken out. Any incentive should not be included in the total amount repayable. You need to go back to TSB for an explanation.
As an aside the mortgage plus your deposit should equal the purchase price of the property. So either you’d have paid less deposit because your mortgage is £500 higher or the solicitors should have £500 remaining in the account.
I’d make sure the solicitors haven’t given the vendors £500 too much.

Have you had a statement of accounts / invoice from the solicitors yet?

Normally cash back payments are paid to the solicitor and accounted for in the Cash statement received from the solicitor
so statement would receive
Loan funds 98,885
cash back. 500

Strictly speaking the solicitor can’t use the cash back to the expenses,but no point in sending it out just for clients to have to send it back in
check your cash statement

We’ve not received anything. The solicitor is claiming that we have had the £500 and that this is accounted for as a cost in his completion statement.

we actually haven’t received any paperwork since completing.. but in our draft completion statement the £500 isn’t mentioned.

We’re really confused. Has he just decided that he’s taking an extra £500 to be our solicitor or what? We’ve already paid him nearly £2k in fees so I’m unsure why he’s taken the £500 cashback for himself?

We’ve checked our mortgage account online and we are repaying the £98,885.

but the solicitors has confirmed he received £99375.. so why has he taken the remainder?

will upload photo of draft completion statement.

This is the draft completion statement.

We sent him the balance long before completion and haven’t received anything since.

Ask them to highlight on their completion statement where the £500 is.
This statement does not show that they received the higher amount from the mortgage lender

@Idontgiveagriffindamn Yes this was sent before completion; he also wasn’t aware we had a cashback until we queried why we hadn’t received it yet.

we haven’t received anything since completion anyway so if it is in there then we haven’t seen it anyway. But he’s claiming he’s used it for his costings.. but we had already paid his fee’s long before completion so that should be covered and therefore we don’t know why he’s kept the £500 as a cost (what cost?!)

Ask your mortgage company to send you full details of what they have created/advanced.

Then check against what the solicitor says he’s received.

If your mortgage balance shows the lower amount, then he’s right and the cash back is accounted for.

If your mortgage balance shows the higher amount, £500 is missing somewhere.

You need to start with the mortgage company, basically. Not the solicitor.

First thing I’d do is ask for the a statement post completion. You’ll then be able to see what’s happened to the £500 - have the costs go up, the amount owed by you gone down or something else.
Without the final statement you can’t see anything.
Obviously if the costs have gone up then you need to challenge that.
If the amount owed by you has gone down and you sent the original amount it should be a quick email with evidence requesting the surplus be refunded.
I’d probably be following the solicitors internal complaints procedure now as you’ve queried a few times. Depending on when you completed I’d also be complaining about the lack of final statement.

based on all of that the solicitor owes you £500

Your solicitor has said they received £99,375 from the lender, yet the completion statement shows they received £98,885 and adds up on this basis so that's where the £500 is missing from the calculation - it should either show £99,375 on this line, because that is what they were sent or they should show two lines of £98,885 for the mortgage advance and £500 for the cashback.

Either way the statement should show a surplus of £500, which is the cashback that you are owed and should receive.

I would confirm the amount that was sent with the mortgage lender and then go back to the solicitor and point out their error and ask for your £500.

He’s sent us another ‘draft’ completion statement this morning; which is pretty different to the draft we received.. he said he will get his assistant to send us the actual completeion statement but this could take a few days.

why are there so many extra charges that weren’t in our original fees?

the paper copy is what we received before completion. The screenshot is the other draft he’s sent us this morning?! We weren’t made aware of these extra charges which seems bizarre.

Which extra charges do you mean? The solicitor fees are the same in both copies

This

Your solicitor did receive £99,375 from the lender, on that they are correct. However that isn't the mortgage amount. That is the mortgage amount PLUS your £500 cash back. You need to speak to the lender in the first instance and get proof from them that the mortgage is the lesser amount, then you can take this to your solicitor and show them in black and white that the £99,375 includes your £500 cash back. Which they need to give you.

So we received another ‘draft’ completion statement from solicitor this morning - still nothing on here to say anything about the cashback.. but he has added extra charges on that we weren’t aware of.

we paid the full “balance due by client to complete” so obviously thought we were square after this, the paperwork he sent with this and the invoice also says that the costings are ‘fixed’ so we’re unsure why there are now more charges than the original bits we were sent.

I commented on your other thread, but now you have uploaded the two completion statements that is more helpful.

The second one (screenshot that he is finalising) shows the higher amount of the mortgage advance as you were querying - this is your mortgage advance PLUS cashback. So it looks like solicitors received it, as I said would have been the case.

Wait for the final one when he has it finalised and you'll see if you're owed anything more or if you owe them it.

It is fairly standard to send a draft completion statement to make sure the sols have enough money to complete and then a finalised one afterwards. As I can see, he says he's waiting on a buildings statement first so I'm guessing it's a new build perhaps and they havent provided the finalised apportionments? There's service charge and ground rent too so presumably leasehold, so it's just a case of the other side not having calculated all of this before I'm guessing.

But your original query of what happened to the cashback is resolved from this new comp stat and the answer is what I stated before - it went to the sols and it was being included in the statement as a credit and offset against your costs/debits...