Solicitor's fees when a buyer pulls out

[prettywhiteguitar]

Hi, just wondering if anyone can shed some light on this, we had an offer accepted on our property in Feb, went to exchange on 26th last month and the buyer pulled out due to his solicitor advising him not to go ahead.

Now, he knew that he was going to pull out a week before he advised us but let us go ahead and complete. Now we may face paying the solicitor (I think)

Is it possible to get something off the buyer towards these fees as he told the estate agent he knew he would pull out ?

Sorry, rambling post I know, just sick and tired of this situation. Now had our property off the market since feb when he was never going to complete and now its really quiet ! Dp starts work in a month and will have an 80 mile round trip to work, lost our house and we are back to square one :(

You will need to pay your solicitors fees and won't be able to get any of this or your other costs back.
We had 2 buyers do this to us before we were able to move house.
Isn't buying and selling property in this country great

Did you exchange first, or did he pull out first? If you have exchanged and then he pulled out, he would be liable for rather a lot, but I am presuming it was before exchange .

I donlt think any fees incurred over tht last week would be significant. I'm afraid it is a risk of the English property system that there is no financial or legal redress until exchange has taken place. We too had an aborted sale and actually weren't charged until we finally completed 6 months later.

Thanks for replying, no he hadn't signed anything just let us go ahead and do it, get this, kept telling our estate agent he'd instructed his solicitor to go ahead....for three days !!

Well we will have to pay I guess but he has some seriously bad karma coming his way

Cookiemonster I'm sorry to hear this has happened twice to you ! It hasbeen a total nightmare from Feb and I am really sick of it all now.

A glimmer of light may be that our solicitor did not charge us for someone who did something similar to us, it was good business sense because the property sold quickly, he had done most of the ground work and just charged us when completion eventually took place.

Not everyone will take this view, but I do hope this happens for you.

Thankyou ElsieMc that gives me some hope ! Have a viewing on Sat and have everything crossed and cleaned twice

and some of the paperwork can be reused like the fixtures and fittings list so you only get charged the once .