Exchanged but completion fell through - absolute nightmare!

[anunseemlylovefordustin]

I don't know whether I'm looking for advice or just to vent! The sale of our old house completed in early September and I moved into rented accommodation while I looked for somewhere else to buy.

Found somewhere, exchanged contracts on 22nd October, with a completion date of 29th.

The 29th rolls around, I have the whole place packed up, movers are booked to bring all my stuff out of storage, mortgage funds are in and waiting at my Solicitors. At about 3pm I get the call that the 'OS20' search has shown up a problem, in that there is a strip of the garden that isn't actually owned by the seller!

Cue an absolute nightmare of having to return mortgage funds, unpack everything, lose all of my moving costs etc.

The seller is still trying to sort out the title with the landowner, who has apparently agreed to sign it over for his legal costs (it's just a little strip and is enclosed by the fence) and it looks as if it'll take another few weeks. Although I'm rapidly losing the will to live here in my tiny accommodation with a toddler, two cats and two dogs, with all my stuff in storage for coming up for the third month, I don't seem to have any choice but to wait (unless anyone has any ideas that I haven't thought of?)

Has anyone else been in this situation? Any ideas or advice or similar experiences?

We found out that we didn’t own all of our garden via a chat with a neighbour after we’d moved in. All of the houses bought a few extra square metres from the Water company. So there were two different titles. We got it sorted retrospectively. Is this something similar?

www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems.page

this is the solicitors regulation authority

Yes, I think it will end up with two titles - one covering the little strip of land and the other covering the rest. There has been a little bit of progress this week, in that the landowner apparently has agreed to sign the strip over for just his legal costs. So hopefully that will be moved forward next week. I've written to the head of department at the Solicitors to formally request that they confirm why their company position is that they don't request OS2's till after exchange (when you can request them before exchange).

Thanks for that link, will have a look!

Regardless of when they do OS2 applications, they should have still been aware that the strip of land was owned by someone else. They would have done a SIM (search of the index map) search at the beginning of the transaction along with local authority search etc. The SIM result would have listed all the relevant title numbers and then you request official copies from the Land Registry to ascertain who owns what title number. It's basic conveyancing so you should never have got to exchange without knowing about the random strip of land.

@anunseemlylovefordustin The issue is nothing to do with the OS2, that wouldn't have made the issue come to light.

You need to dig further into how the land was missed pre exchange, the OS2 just checks for any new adverse entries to the title of a specific plot of land you ask to be searched (such as new mortgages) since the first copy of the title register was checked by your solicitor early on in the process.