Can I complain to a regulator about my buyer's solicitor?

[angeldumottschunard]

Hi all, first ever post, and I'm really hoping you can help! My house chain fell through this week, on the day we were all set to exchange. I had confirmation from my solicitor that we'd be exchanging by close of play, but just 10 minutes later I had a call from the estate agent of the house we were buying to tell me that the vendors had accepted another offer and we'd lost the house.

We, our vendors, and their vendors had all been ready to exchange for over 2 weeks and we were just waiting for our (first time) buyer's solicitor to sign off their file. We'd been chasing daily and telling them the chain was going to collapse but they refused to look at our file because they were "prioritising files that were closer to their completion date" than ours. By the time they finally signed it off, we'd lost the house we were trying to buy so we have had to pull out of the sale.

So we're a couple of thousand pounds out of pocket, have almost an entire house to unpack, and nothing to show for it - we agreed sales on Nov 3rd.

Sorry this is so long, but does anyone have any idea what (if anything) I can do about putting in a complaint to the Solicitor Regulation Authority? Their site says I can only complain about my own solicitors, so I can't believe that a chain can collapse due a solicitor's inaction but I'm not even allowed to complain - is that right?

Sorry if I'm not reading this right, but it sounds like you were gazumped by your vendor? It might be hard to prove that your buyer's solicitor had anything to do with that

Is your argument that if the solicitor had acted sooner, the vendors wouldn’t have had time to accept another offer?

You are being angry at the wrong people. Your vendors couldn't have found alternative buyers that quickly. They have been stringing you along for months.

Who told you that other files were being prioritised? Firstly, I don't think you can prove that the chain collapsed due to solicitors' inaction and as other pps have said, your vendors seem to have been suspiciously quick in progressing a sale with someone else.

We were about twenty minutes away from our chain collapsing due to similar horrendous incompetence from our buyer’s crap conveyancer.

I ended up DMing a woman from the firm on her personal Twitter and begging; it was so ridiculous.

Having looked in desperation at the ombudsman, it does indeed seem you have no recourse at all unless you are the client.

ShitFirm’s own complaints procedure suggested they had 24hrs to respond to calls or emails from clients. In the world of exchanging and completing, this is ridiculous as we would get to 5.29pm every day and get a one line email saying “hopefully tomorrow”.

I genuinely think me getting on the tits of this woman on Twitter (as in being super nice and begging, not being a bitch so she didn’t block me) was the only way we completed and kept our chain.

We ended up thousands out of pocket though thanks to booked removals and a fiasco involving having to stay in an air bnb as all our stuff was on a van and we didn’t exchange as promised.

I’m really sorry for your chain and there needs to be a better way for the whole process. Seems like your vendors were massive dicks, too though.

@senua

You are being angry at the wrong people. Your vendors couldn't have found alternative buyers that quickly. They have been stringing you along for months.

This. Your vendors are cunts and you’re angry at the wrong people. We need a system like Scotland where gazumping is illegal once offers have been accepted

Thanks for all the responses. Sorry, zero idea how to respond to people individually.

Yes, our vendors were absolute dicks and managed to get another sale very (suspiciously) quickly, but they only re-marketed on Friday - we've all been ready to exchange for 2 weeks. If we'd have exchanged then, the vendors wouldn't have re-marketed. The buyer's solicitor was aware of this and still just sat on the file without doing anything, despite daily chases from our solicitor and our buyers.

I think I just can't believe that I can't even complain about it. I've got emails from the buyer's solicitor from 28 Feb saying they're expecting exchange to happen by the end of the week, then a week later saying they're prioritising other files.

I work in a very heavily regulated industry and would not last two minutes if I treat clients quite so badly.

I work in a very heavily regulated industry and would not last two minutes if I treat clients quite so badly.

The problem is that you are not their client, the vendor is.

OP, that sounds massively like the seller telling the solicitor "just to hold off a little."........... while he got another buyer lined up.

Unfortunately in the U.K. system you have literally no recourse until exchange has gone ahead.

Unfortunately you’re not their clients, you actually don’t know what instructions they were given

GU24 it wasn't the sellers solicitor who was at fault, but the buyers'.