Solicitors raising queries before exchange: What's the weirdest you've heard of?

[Madmotherintheattic]

In your previous or current purchases?
Or what did they miss that you discovered later?

Why does the house cost more to buy than you paid?

Life begins - it may seem like a silly question but there are a couple of reasons to ask it. Firstly, it could have been sold at an under value previously which may cause issues and also if it's marketed at a higher price it may be that works have been carried out and therefore, they would need to raise further enquiries requesting guarantees/certs etc.

You may think that some questions are stupid but essentially your solicitor is just doing their job. You're not buying a packet of crisps, it's a huge purchase and the more You know about it the better. But at the end of the day it's your purchase and if you want them to drop an enquiry just ask them to, and unless it is a requirement of your lender to know the answer they have to take your instructions.

Not sure if I can peg this on the solicitor but my sister bought a house which turned out to have an extra cellar - vendor clearly knew and said nothing possibly because it kept filling with water, which was expensive to sort.

Estate agent, solicitor and surveyor all missed it - just goes to show!

One solicitor I used kept banging on about the local petrol station devaluing the property, asking me if I was aware it was so close. I remember scouring the area to find this petrol station and giving up. But he failed to mention the planning permission that had been granted to build a new house next house. Work started a few months after we moved in. I was so cross. That's exactly the kind of thing you are paying your solicitor to find out and tell you about.

The next solicitor I used asked ZERO questions about anything at all.

Next time I will do my own conveyancing!

It's the ones who try to renegotiate the price on daft stuff. We had one buyer who did this and we went along with it for awhile eventually she just pissed me off so much that I said to the agent that's enough now, put it back on the market and don't phone me with any further queries from her. If you do I'm terminating our contract..she is clearly not wishing to proceed. Lo and behold I got not further queries and she proceeded to exchange without a murmer.

It was stuff like, in a few years the fence will need replacing, will you pay half of it now by dropping the price. Can you pay for the curtains to be dry cleaned and knock it off the price. A different thing every single day, ODFOD.

When we were buying this place we were arguing over s fixture being removed which was advertised on the brochure. Someone at work said to me "do you want the house? Is it really that important that you will pull out because of this? " and when I thought about it the answer was I did want the house and it wasn't that important so I let it go. I think folks get too caught up sometimes.

Buyer wanted us to fix a floating floor that dipped slightly when you went from the back room to the conservatory. Husband fixed it but the solicitor wanted evidence that a professional had fixed it and we needed to provide an invoice and if we couldn't do that, demonstrate my husband was competent to repair a floorboard. This was on top of a squeaky tread on a staircase and a door they wanted sorting.

It was at this point we told them to get f**ked and if they didn't confirm completion date, we weren't selling to them. They confirmed that day.

I was asked if there had ever been radiation in my flat. Which was in an urban area 100 miles from an nuclear power stations.

ACatCalledFang that's awful! However, perhaps bear in mind that the solicitor does not visit the property, whereas obviously the estate agent and surveyor do. The solicitor gathers all the evidence to make sure their client is buying a good property. If the information regarding the cellar was not in the estate agent's particulars, nor the survey, then the solicitor would not know of its existence in order to raise enquiries on it.

Their solicitor has queried why you haven't answered question 14.

^Have you added a conservatory to the property?
^
No. It's a second floor flat and I'd have hoped your client would have noticed that!

Our solicitor spotted that our cul-de-sac road wasn't adopted (6 houses), but missed that the communal grounds of the entire estate hadn't been adopted either (60 houses) and we were all therefore jointly responsible for maintenance. To be fair, it was complicated and it all came to light by coincidence as we we were selling (potentially expensive maintenance issue had cropped up) and it caused a huge problem as well as costing us a small fortune to sort. Massively stressful. The solicitor for our new house probably got fed up with us asking millions of questions about who was responsible for what, as no way were we getting into that situation again.

But he failed to mention the planning permission that had been granted to build a new house next house.

Do you not search local planning before evening going to view? I don't want to waste anyone's time so I do a lot of research before even viewing!

We booked in to see one property and I specifically asked about planning, agent said none had been granted. A few seconds on google and indeed local planning has said no, government had overruled and 400 houses were going up on the fields.

On my sale - wanting building regs and PP for the loft conversion.

There was no fucking loft conversion! The house was built in 1910 on three floors.

Solicitor would not accept this. Got replies such as "are you a qualified surveyor? Of not, what qualifications do you have that provide your with the authority to say the loft conversion does not need building regs?"

Face. Palm.

In the end I found a photo of the street from the early 1900s showing windows on the top floor of the houses and told the buyers we progressed ot it was going back on the market.

Our buyer's solicitor asked if the sonic mouse scarer thing in the loft mean we had mice? If so, would we be leaving it behind when we moved? We graciously agreed to this request.

The stairs from the groundfloor to the1st floor flat (conversion) did not seem to be included in the plan... you came in door (not communal and went straight up the stairs) I don't think that there were any grounds that anyone could deny that was part of the flat..

Days before exchange "Does it have loft insulation". Are they going to pull out if it doesn't????!

Spickle, it's quite funny really. Well, to me because it's not my house! Obviously their solicitor never visited the property but I find it odd that the cellar wasn't on any plans at all. There is another cellar which DSis was aware of, but they only found this second one after they moved in and noticed that the doormat sat flush with the floor, ie it was fitted into a depression in the carpet. Lifted it up and lo, a hatch was revealed.....

I just find it fascinating that there can be a whole room in a property not marked on the plans, not noted on any forms (no box to tick for cellars on the Property Information Form), and not spotted by the surveyor - in other words, entirely dependent on the vendor choosing to disclose its existence!

I once came across an enquiry of "have their been any murders or notorious events at the property?"

That's a ruddy good question! Imagine buying a house where someone had been murdered. eek.

User99573864 : Have you ever added a conservatory on a second floor flat? Hahahahahahah priceless.

I worked for a bank years ago processing mortgage applications. A customer was buying a house on an island in the Thames. The surveyor wrote in his report that as the road bridge was in his opinion in disrepair that the bank should not lend on the property.

The customer complained to head office. Head office said "There are no islands in the Thames". When we told them that there are, they replied "ooh that sounds lovely, of course we can lend on the property".

Our seller wanted us to pay for fitted carpet over a whole floor!!! It was grotty so we said no thanks. They then said oh well, they'd leave it (as a favour) and we asked them to remove it. They refused.

Our buyers had their solicitor ask if we had the manuals for the white goods we had agreed to leave

Would we pay for their rabbit and parrots accommodation before and during the few weeks it would take them to move. One answer to that, NO. Move on one day and we did.

Helterskelter that's not as bizarre as it sounds! We are currently going through a rectification of deeds as our lease only says we own the back garden and everything within the boundary on the first floor, common sense says the private stairs inside our flat, with only an external door and with no use to anyone else would be ours but the buyers solicitors/mortgage company won't have it so we're off down the rectification route!
Our other bizarre question 'you have said the boiler was there when you moved in in 2006 so surely you can confirm it's more than 10 years old?' Kind of answering there own question, especially since we had it serviced for the buyer because it hadn't been serviced in the last 10 years!!!! 😂