Has anyone had an inherited/probate property sale get badly delayed?

[SunnyHazelJoker]

I’m curious if anyone here has been involved in buying or selling an inherited/probate property where the sale ended up getting stuck for months.
I’m especially interested in cases where something unexpected came up later, like missing deeds, an old mortgage or charge, a previous owner still being on the title, unregistered land, or some other ownership/probate issue.
What actually caused the delay in your case? And did it get picked up early, or only after the sale was already underway?
I’m just trying to understand what tends to go wrong in real cases, so any experiences would be really helpful.

It was not on the Land Regustry. The original deeds had been lodged with the solicitor many years before, who had mis-filed them and falsely claimed I had already collected them. I had to get it registered by swearing how long I had known the house and its boundaries. The solicitor later found the misfiled documents.

Yes, there was a dispute that lasted four years.

I sold DMs property to pay for care home fees. Mum died so I lost power of attorney so the sale halted. The buyer had delayed completion (numerous surveys and building quotes) and mum died 2 days before the new completion date. I was so cross with the buyer! It was a tiny bungalow!

So the buyer then pulled out. I got probate 8 weeks later and the agents contacted the people who had viewed the bungalow 5 months earlier and one now had cash from her sale and was desperate to buy so she offered me more than the previous buyer. Easy sale - except her solicitor didn’t seem to work in the school holidays and we had some odd queries from the “stand in”. They asked about ownership of the “land” beside the road outside the boundary! It was the street pavement. Overall no issues with deeds, money or probate. However I didn’t market until I’d got probate and I’d never buy whilst an estate is waiting for probate. We were very quick but I had everything sorted out - except a few bits and pieces. Large complex estates are far more challenging and time consuming.

I have no experience of this myself, as I am still just looking to buy, but it is something I have been reading up on so I do not get caught out. The causes that come up again and again seem to be a missing or unregistered title, an old charge nobody ever cleared, and the executors not actually having the grant yet. A lot of it seems to come down to whether anyone checks the register early. If you buy before probate is granted you can end up waiting months with no way to hurry it, so MeetMeOnTheCorner's point about not buying whilst an estate waits for probate sounds sensible to me. PigletJohn's story about the deeds being misfiled sounds like a nightmare. It would be interesting to hear whether OP is on the buying or selling side, because the advice is quite different for each.

Yes. Don’t agree to buy anything before probate is granted. You could be wasting your time and money. Most houses are registered and are ready for sale though as most owners aren’t that daft!

The house I was executor for, a relative moved into the spare room before the owner died, against the owners wishes, and subsequently refused to move out or give a leave date.

I eventually changed the locks while she was out and put her belongings on the doorstep.

Come to think of it, some years earlier I had been executor for someone else, and after her death, the same relative drove off in her car for a months holiday round the country, without telling me. No insurance. And hid some valuables, not all of which I was able to recover.

We are not now on speaking terms.

@PigletJohn The moral of the story is to disable the car or remove it and change locks immediately.

The moral of the story is to ban thieves and parasites from your life.

That sounds like a mess. When the deeds couldn’t be found and the property wasn’t registered, what actually took the most time to get it sorted? Was it proving the ownership/boundaries to Land Registry, dealing with the solicitor, or something else?

That sounds like it worked out really well in the end.
You mentioned that larger or more complex estates are much more difficult. What kind of things usually make them more complicated in your experience?

We had a problem with finalising probate because the bank hadn’t notified the land registry that he’d paid off the mortgage years earlier. It took a lot of faff and in the end I wrote to the bank’s CEO to get it sorted after ringing up various departments for weeks.

It did hold up the sale of the house because we weren’t able to transfer title with a charge still on it.

@SunnyHazelJoker Extensive savings with no good records kept. No use of a wealth adviser and a DIY approach to investments where tracing them is difficult.

Add to that - complex family businesses, arguing relatives and complex tax affairs. The biggest difficulty is the deceased being disorganised and no-one else knowing anything about their financial affairs and multiple investments and properties. I’m sure there’s more!