House sale: Conflict of interest?

[Pegs11]

Hi, we’ve been selling our property through Connells. It’s been an absolute farce from the start. There has been no sales progression, there have been untold delays, it’s taken nearly six months and we don’t even have a chain at either end.

We are now close to exchange but there is a holdup: the buyer has requested a homebuyer survey. VERY late in the day. The buyer’s solicitor is dragging their heels over last-minute enquiries.

And here’s the thing: the buyers are using Talbots as their solicitor - on the advice of Connells. And Talbots are part of the Connells group! It has only just occurred to me that surely this can’t be right? Connells are supposed to be working for us!

Furthermore, it’s a Connells group company who will be carrying out the homebuyer survey on behalf of the buyer! Risking our entire sale by doing so, and putting us in a very stressful position at the eleventh hour.

Surely this a conflict of interest?! Is this even legal?!

Your buyer should have had a survey before now, any decent lawyer would have told them they need it. Yes it's a conflict of interest but one that can be managed by the company having different people involved.

It's your buyer who should be concerned.

Why would the solicitor not act independently? Why would they deliberately hold up a sale that adds profit to their overall company? It’s not any conflict of interest as they all have the same interest. The buyers need to get a move on as you now have to wait for a survey. I’m amazed you didn’t expect this earlier and ask when it was happening. No doubt they will
now ask for a reduction in price!

As an aside comment, lawyers from the same barristers chambers can represent opposing sides in court. There are rules, but it’s legal.

@TizerorFizz we were told originally that they weren’t going to have a survey, so it was a total shock when we were told yesterday that they now wanted one, at the eleventh hour. I don’t know why they suddenly decided they needed one. Whether it was the solicitor who urged them to, or perhaps their parents (they are young first-time buyers).

Surveys usually come back with loads of advisories, and I am very worried that their lack of experience will make them freak out and pull out of the sale, or demand a reduction in price. We already had to significantly drop the price for them once, due to the house failing its mortgage valuation! For it to happen again would be a disaster.

I think Connells could and should have managed this so much better, they have no decent explanation as to why this has happened and considering they work in the same group of companies as Talbots and the surveyors I would have thought they’d be on top of this and have good lines of communication and not allow this to happen at the last minute. I thought it’s what I am paying them for.

@Pegs11
Well I’m not sure you can control your buyers changing their minds. You are not paying their solicitors or their surveyors are you? Just because companies sit within a group of companies doesn’t mean much regarding communication. In fact nothing. Are you using the same solicitor? In which case you have a point but otherwise buyers change their minds and yes, if there’s work needed on your house, they might negotiate on price. If it’s perfect, don’t worry but yes, it’s a delay.

What has your solicitor been doing regarding exchanging contracts?

@TizerorFizz The survey certainly won’t come back perfect… there are window handles that don’t work, a couple of plug sockets that don’t work, there are some other bits and pieces ... nothing massive (that we know of) but just little things that all add up. I just think this all should have been done ages ago and if they wanted to renegotiate on price, it should have been done long before now, not at the very last minute. We can’t absorb another financial blow without it being very destructive for us (we already had to wave goodbye to £25k thanks to the earlier mortgage downvaluation).

I’m pissed off. I feel like Connells misled us. They made out like having their comveyancing team do our buyers’ purchase would make everything so much smoother and quicker and really talked up how they were in regular contact with the team there and how super good they were at getting on with things and providing updates and blah blah… but none of that has actually happened. It’s taken six months to get to this point. With no chain at either end! It’s crazy. And scary, because with each day that passes, house prices are dropping and if our buyer pulls out and we have to re-market, we will be lucky to get the same price as we did six months ago. I just know that this could have been done in 2-3 months and it’s so frustrating that’s it’s taking so long, there is no good reason for it, other than Connells being lazy and letting our buyers drag their feet instead of progressing the sale. I don’t think they’ve earned their fee.

Meanwhile, the buyers’ solicitor wanted to see all kinds of paperwork and get us to indemnify the buyer against things like building regs and restrictive covenants and radon... fine, except we were NEVER made aware of these things by our solicitor when we bought the house five years ago!

We are using the same solicitor for our sale as when we bought, and it’s only now just become clear how negligent they were. They didn’t report on any of this stuff when we bought the house, they didn’t request any indemnities on our behalf, they didn’t advise us of any things to watch out for… And now that same solicitor is saying we need to pay them MORE money to draw up indemnities to insure against all the things they failed to make us aware of when we bought the house!

This whole thing is just SO scary and feels SO fragile, and I feel really let down by Connells and by our solicitor. And I’m just terrified, really terrified, of losing this sale at such a late stage and having to start all over again. The implications of that are pretty massive for us, for several reasons, and I’m really losing sleep over it now.

I don't blame you for felling so frustrated, I would be going nuts and causing a scene. When I sold my house the buyer didn't want a survey so I was sent the sellers info pack thing one week after I accepted their offer (can't remember what its called!) where I filled in about radon tests , copies of window certificates etc. Then the usual back and forth and I had to pay for Insurance on the extension as I didn't have any paperwork. This went on for a month, I don't understand what's been happening for 6 months? Did you have weeks of no communication?

I think you should put right what’s obviously wrong if it’s small things. Just eliminate some of the issues.

i can see it’s annoying and definitely all these things should have been asked before you bought. Didn’t you think about building regs for work done to the property? Did you have a survey? Surely not all of this is a surprise?

I really sympathise with your frustration and worry.

The solicitors being part of the same group shouldn’t be an issue, and in any case if there was a Conflict of interest that would work in your favour as the EAs need to get your house sold to get their fee!

It does sound as if the solicitors, including yours, have been dozy. And the buyers are showing their inexperience in not commissioning a survey earlier.

Homebuyers Reports are pretty superficial really. You can resist any calls for a price reduction by saying the price reflects the condition and the mortgage valuation established the value so you won’t be going below that.

Hang on in there, OP, and fingers crossed for you.

when we bought this house the seller used the same firm of solicitors as we did but they got over the conflict of interest by one solicitor being from a different branch ie us in our location hers in another location

There's no conflict of interest here, if there was it would work in your favour anyway as the EA is on your side.

The main thing is that you thought you were going to get a stress free no survey sale done and that's not happening.

That's just unlucky. You'll have to suck it up because there's nothing you can do about it.

The good news is that Surveyors are generally useless.

Be grateful you still a buyer in this market and let the chips fall where they may.

The surveyor won't check electric sockets, window handles that don't work only if the windows don't open really. But broken window handles are a 10 quid DIY job or a hundred quid professional job at the most and nobody in their right mind would negotiate over them.

I wouldn't advise it, could open a can of worms where you just see more problems.

If there's no major things there's nothing to worry about.

Most of the indemnities aren't worth the paper they're written on tbh. Do you still have a copy of the survey you had done when you bought? Could you go through it and mitigate some of the issues? Like fixing the window handles.

I suppose first time buyers can overthink things but it's a big chunk of money and they obviously want everything to be OK.

There is no issue. Estate agents always push their linked solicitors. It’s the norm.

Some buyers ask for surveys at last minute like an after thought. I wouldn’t read too much into it. It will offer them peace of mind and often small faults won’t worry people

If the survey flags bigger issues which require a discount in price, it’s only fair this effects sale price.

@HotChoxs
Why? Screwing on loose sockets or small jobs isn’t going to cause any issues. If there is a can of worms lurking, the Op should know about it! If I was the buyer I might run away if there’s a can of worms!! So the op needs to do what they can.

Then what's the point of doing it? And yes if you bodge a small job which is easily done you get a bigger job.

Can of worms means they end up stressing more about all these small things that need doing and end up bodging something, not that there's bigger problems lurking.

Sounds like you know they're going to undercover something significant. It's pretty normal to get a survey

@HotChoxs
Bizarre logic there! The op
should do the obvious repairs. It’s hardly stressful. And since when does that make you bodge anything! Just do a decent job and get on with it. The things the op mentioned are not difficult to put right. The survey might be if there are issues with the house. However it’s always best to do repairs as you go along. I don’t understand people who don’t bother so little jobs become bigger ones.

my buyers of my parents house did the same last year but I made it clear I wasn’t going to negotiate the price . It was an old house and they knew that when they put in the offer

but it cant be as bad as my solicitor
fucking idiot withdrew the mortgage funds and was well aware that the sellers a HA wasn’t ready at the point .
by doing this because we couldn’t exchange and complete within 28 days as sellers weren’t ready ( Clause by the mortgage lender)

So we lost the mortgage and have had to reapply again at a much higher rate
will cost an extra 8.5 k over 5 years

obviously we are going to put in a complaint but I would happily bury the fucker In My garden and piss on him every day
This wasn’t a small firm or an online firm either but one with several offices

Not difficult to put right? What's your diagnosis of the non working plug sockets? Have you checked the wiring? Obviously going to have to call in a sparky which means that you may end up with detrimental knowledge of something which a survey isn't even going to pick up.

It may not be stressful for you, how do you know it's not going to end up stressful for someone who worries about 10 quid DIY jobs putting off a buyer?

Someone thinks non working plug sockets are going to show up on a survey and you're advising them to start fixing things?

As you say you don't understand people who don't bother so bizzare that you're giving advice to one.

It’s not bizarre to say the relatively small things should be fixed. Preferably before you sell. If you know you have dodgy electrics, do
you teslky pass this on to first time buyers? Well shitty people to snd don’t care! People who walk away having covered things up are shoddy cheating individuals. We all know it’s buyer beware but get things fixed! Be decent.

Don't be ridiculous, it's not been 'covered up'. It's up to the buyers to examine the property, not for the sellers to start getting sparkies in who have an interest in quoting for further work.

Wow so many replies! Thank you, and I didn’t mean to cause arguments 😂

We managed to get the survey done quickly - we were very insistent - so it was done yesterday. The report should come back on Monday. At least that’s not too long to wait…

I have looked around many houses and have made sure to check for things like broken window handles and I have always taken this into account when considering an offer, I figure it’s my responsibility to check for stuff like that. I’ve never expected the vendor to fix it themselves… whether that makes me a mug or not I don’t know.

We have actually made our best effort to fix some of the little things as best we can, but it needs an expert for some of them and we haven’t been able to find one. Like, seriously. Services are in high demand and no one wants to come out and do little jobs at the moment for pennies when there are many bigger jobs they can make better money from.

Anyway, the guy who came round to do the survey seemed much more concerned about things like rising damp and Japanese knotweed (neither of which we have, thankfully) so I’ve got my fingers crossed that the report won’t be too bad. I’ll keep you all posted.

Good news.

Every place I've bought has had at least one dodgy window handle 😂