Property sale fell through, conveyancer charging me

[Louisa1962]

I recently opened a thread about some property developers pulling out of a sale because they failed to get planning permission to convert my property into flats.

Soon after I received an abortive bill from the conveyancer, for £486 for the work they had completed to the point at which the buyers pulled out. I now have another offer on the table, and may need conveyancing process Re-started. Is it correct that the conveyancer will or should deduct the abortive costs I have paid from the final bill? Or is this considered a new transaction? I am also stuck waiting to buy another property and the conveyancer sent me a further quote for that sale. Should I be paying two lots of legal fees? The whole thing is confusing me and I just don’t understand any of it.

Usually conveyancing is not 'no win no fee' I'm afraid, you almost always have to pay fees for the work done even if the sale falls through from no fault of your own. And no, unless they are unusually generous, the solicitors won't deduct the fees from your next purchase as still have to do all the work over again on the next property...

If you'd already exchanged then you could claim your lost costs from the property developers but sounds as though this wasn't the case?

Unfortunately this is the issue with our system in the UK where no-one is financially committed until after exchange of contracts, it is perfectly legal for either party to pull out right up until exchange with no compensation payable, and particularly as a buyer you can be left with bills of thousands of pounds (for searches, conveyancing, mortgage application fees and surveys) with nothing whatsoever to show for it. The seller can also (perfectly legally) suddenly ramp up the agreed sale price right before exchange and effectively blackmail you for more money or lose what you've already spent - it's happened to me and it sucks. Sorry OP, hope for better luck next time!

This is normal. Did you not realise before you started? Lesson in always reading the small print, I'm afraid. There are "no sale, no fee" outfits but they tend to be more expensive, because they have to factor in the percentage of sales that won't go through.

It's a bummer when a sale falls through (happened to me about a month back - and I was simultaneously trying to buy and sell when the chain collapsed so my legal fees on the failed deal were about twice yours), so I do sympathise with you over the lost money. But I'm afraid that's how it works: the solicitor has done the work whether or not the sale happens, and you can't expect them to work for free.

Someone has done work for you so you need to pay for it. If/when they do more work, you’ll need to pay for that too. Nothing more to it.

We had 2 lots of buyers pull out and our solicitor only charged us one conveyancing fee for the sale. There isn't a huge amount of extra work as you'll already have completed all the forms, etc, for the first sale that fell through. So I'm a bit surprised by this too!

Recently I had an offer accepted on a house but had to pull out after the survey - solicitor had already started searches and had done preliminary work so I didn't get anything of my £275 deposit back. Then had to pay second deposit once offer accepted on another house. Fortunately that's all gone smoothly

It's not clear from your posts - but what has the conveyancer actually done regarding your sale that they can't re-use other than a few emails to aborted purchasers solicitor? Which you should pay for.

Or are you talking about conveyancing costs on a purchase which has had to be aborted? In which case again yes you have to pay the costs but these will be much higher than for an aborted sale.

I am referring to costs incurred for a sale of my own home, my conveyancer is charging me for the initial stages which are roughly 25% of a quoted £1900. The buyer pulled out before exchange, in fact they pulled out before searches had been done, as they were awaiting planning permission.

Yes there would be abortive costs, such as any liaison with your mortgage company, land registry, preparation of draft contracts, letters and phone calls. Some of information may be reused such as any enquiries or fixtures and fittings but some would be specific to the failed buyer.

My conveyencer just added it to the house we did buy when our 1st house fell through. That may be an option.