Failure to complete

[kitchenplanner]

I'm meant to complete (on both a sale and a simultaneous purchase) on Tuesday, but have just today been told by our solicitors that our previous lender's charge has not yet been removed from the title on the property we're selling. We switched from this lender to a new lender in August (a remortgage).

The solicitor apparently was unaware that this remortgage had even happened. The remortgage was a quick procedure managed by a conveyancer appointed by our broker.

I'm now so worried that completion won't happen as a result. The solicitor emailed at 5pm with no discussion of what would happen if the charge was not removed. They have already received verbal confirmation of removal, but not written. They've been waiting for this since we exchanged, apparently.

Can we complete anyway? If not, whose fault is it, who should we take legal action against for damages?

Help!

Anybody?

The Land Registry has massive backlogs, it's taking up to three months to update records.

If that's the reason, there's no one you can sue.

I can’t quite understand. Do you mean that you remortgaged you house, that you are selling, to a new provider last month (presumably after it was SSTC)?! And that when you did that you didn’t inform your solicitor? That’s highly irregular and may well end up being your fault if it’s something you should have disclosed.

They conveyancer who dealt with the remortgage should have ensured the previous lender's charge was removed. I'd follow this up with them ASAP and copy in your current solicitor.

Ask your current solicitor if you can complete on the basis of a solicitors undertaking from the previous conveyancer.

It's standard procedure to get a redemption figure from your lender so that the mortgage is paid off as part of the sale - is your solicitor saying they've not done that before today (as otherwise they'd know you don't have a mortgage with the lender set out on the register).

@thinkfast

They conveyancer who dealt with the remortgage should have ensured the previous lender's charge was removed. I'd follow this up with them ASAP and copy in your current solicitor.

Ask your current solicitor if you can complete on the basis of a solicitors undertaking from the previous conveyancer.

We had a similar issue and did exactly this and it was fine. The solicitor handling the sale and the one that created the issue agreed it between them.

My experience of estate agents and mortgage brokers is that they are experts in the 5 pm on a Friday email of doom.

Try not to worry over the weekend. The chances are that you can sort it out with a couple of phone calls on Monday morning.

In the meantime a strong vodka and valium may help

We have received a redemption statement from Nationwide, who we remortgaged with - the current solicitor has that. And prior to that, we had a redemption statement from HSBC - the previous solicitor had that. The current solicitor says the previous solicitor needs to either expedite their application to remove the charge, or withdraw the application. The previous solicitor was a complete and utter idiot, so I'm worried about this.

@WhyMeLord could I please ask what your circumstances were? Who did you have to shout at to resolve this? PM me if easier! Thanks so much.

We remortaged as part of wider transaction and the solicitor we used hadn't correctly registered the bank's interest so they had put in an application to correct it which hadn't been processed at the time of completion (2 years later!) so was pending at the land registry. We knew nothing about this until our current solicitor did a check when we were selling. I contacted the previous solicitor and put them in touch with the current one and they sorted it between them. I dont know much more than that but I did have to call the previous solicitor a couple of times as they just kept telling me they'd done it 2 years ago and nothing was outstanding. It got resolved very quickly when the current solicitors got in touch with them. I do know it was still outstanding on completion but there was some kind of undertaking from the useless lot.

@WhyMeLord it's not clear to me whether completion can still take place without this issue being fixed? And if completion is under threat, oh god, then what?

@Africa2go they hadn't done this until I asked about it a couple of days after exchange. They then realised the lender wasn't who they thought it was. They've now got the redemption statement, so that's sorted. They're saying they haven't got written confirmation that the previous lender's charge has been removed.

That's really poor, it should have been done well before exchange precisely to avoid problems like you're having now. It's usually part of initial enquiries with the solicitor - when you first instructed them, did you not have to fill out a questionnaire / give basic details of the properties you were buying / selling, mortgages / how much you were putting down as a deposit etc??

@Africa2go
I did at the very start - but of course it was the previous lender then.

Do you know how these things are normally resolved? I'm going out of my mind stewing on this over the weekend...

I'm gutted because I've been so organised throughout and I specifically brought this up at exchange over two weeks ago. The solicitor assured me it was no problem, but here we are with a problem.