Recovery of failed completion expenses

thedaftbird

I was supposed to complete on my house sale/purchase on 1st May.
My buyers bank (Abbey National) lost his completion monies and consequently we did not complete on the 1st and had to wait until the 2nd. Overnight we incurred costs in excess of £400 including a hotel bill and overnight storage/redelivery costs.

My solicitor is now saying that recovering the costs is not included within there conveyancing fee and that if I wish to reclaim these costs then I will have to instuct their litigation dept. They have also advised that I need to 'think about it carefully' as their litigation costs may be more than our expenses.

My questions really is: Whilst i understand that the cost of this is not within the remiut of our conveyancing, surely my solicitors costs in pursuing our expenses should be paid by our buyer/the party responsible for the failed completion? Why should we end up out of pocket over this matter when it was through no fault of our own?

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: I

lincroft1710

I sympathise with you and imagine as well as costly was distressing for 24 hrs or more. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that you would be successful in litigation and even if you were, would be awarded or could claim costs. If you are virtually certain that is the Abbey's fault, why not write to them saying you hold them responsible for delay and ask that they reimburse you for out of pocket expenses as detailed on enclosed invoices. If they say no you could consider feasibility of pursuing matter through "Small Claims" court.

Wutang_2

is the name daft bird a coincidence?

silvercar

Your buyer should compensate you and your buyer separately would decide whether to try for compensation against Abbey. Abbey is not contracted to you in any shape or form so will not be answerable to you.

I would ask your solicitor, as a good will gesture, to write a single letter to your buyers solicitor for reimbursement of your expenses. Your solicitor may not be contracted to you for litigation but this is all part and parcel of the house move, for which he has been paid.

GDB2222

1. You are entitled to reasonable expenses.
2. This would be a small claim, so you would not be able to claim your solicitor's fees for bringing the case. These fees are bound to be more than £400, so you will end up out of pocket.
3. You can issue proceedings yourself, through the county court. The simplest way is to use Moneyclaim Online.
4. Before issuing proceedings, you should write to the other side setting out your loss, and inviting them to pay up. You can include a warning that you will issue proceedings if they don't, or you can leave that for a second letter. My guess is that, if Abbey really were to blame, your buyers will involve Abbey.
5. It will be time-consuming to sue, but hopefully your buyers will pay up without going to court.

abc

A number of years ago a house I was buying didn't complete on the day it should due to the building society not releasing the money - I'm not really sure why - presumably my solicitor hadn't provided them with something. The vendor's solicitors served a notice to complete (within 28 days). The purchase completed well within that time period, I think maybe a week after the original completion date.

About 3 months later out of the blue I received a summons from the small claims court - the vendor was suing me for interest they had to pay on their mortgage between the two dates and the court fee for issuing the proceedings.

I spoke to my solicitor and he said their claim was groundless, and he completed the defence section of the court form and returned it. The day before the court hearing they withdrew their claim (presumably because they could not win).

The crazy thing is that had they at any point prior to issuing court proceedings contacted me (directly or through my solicitor) and said that they had to pay the mortgage for a few extra days because the purchase completed late I would have without question reimbursed them.

As their first course of action was to issue small claims proceedings they destroyed any goodwill and lost out on any payment from me and also it cost them the court fee.

Incisor

thedaftbird wrote: »

... My solicitor is now saying that recovering the costs is not included within there conveyancing fee and that if I wish to reclaim these costs then I will have to instuct their litigation dept. They have also advised that I need to 'think about it carefully' as their litigation costs may be more than our expenses.

Get a copy of the contract from the solicitor and read through it to see what you are entitled to. If you could claim, then it could go to small claims, I would think, but take note of the advice to simply try asking for it. Your solicitor should also be able to give you a straight answer as to what you are entitled to.

Oh, and sudden trigger pulse to the brain, why is your vendor not suing you and his not suing him?

thedaftbird

Incisor, in answer to your brain impulse!
Our buyer was a first time buyer so he was not homeless the day this happened - lucky old him was tucked up at home with Mummy.
The house we were buying was empty therefore the vendors of the property did not have any expenses brought about by the delqay in completion.

As is usual in these cases, we are the innocent party, did everything by the book and we are the ones that are heavily out of pocket. It makes a mockery of the contract though as it clearly isn't worth the paper it was written on.

Richard_Webster

If you knew you had the expenses then if you told your solicitor the morning after the completion didn't take place then he could there and then have registered your claim when he spoke to the buyer's solicitors. They would not have had funds from their client or from the Abbey to pay the extra but some phone calls could have been made and your solicitor could possibly have refused to hand over the signed transfer deed etc until the extra was paid.

This would not have been easy and might not have succeeded but the conveyancer acting for you should have been protecting your interests and registering your claim as far as he could, rather than lamely leaving it to the litigation department. After all, if it was the Abbey's fault then the buyer's solicitor would probably have been quite happy to take up the case with them.

thedaftbird

Thanks for the advice Richard. If only I had known this at the time! Unfortunatly though when you are sitting outside a house in the lashing rain with your whole life in the back of a Pickfords van these questions don't spring to mind! My solicitor told me to stay overnight in a hotel and to keep receipts from this and the extra removal costs so that the funds could be claimed back but it was only 7 days later that I discovered that the matter would be passed to the litigation dept and cost cost me more money.

Foolishly I trusted my solicitor who has let me down badly over this whole 'expenses' ordeal. I have had to complain to the Law Society and thankfully won my case and some compensation for bad service. The flip side is though that my solicitor is now loathe to help me out.

Had I know the whole thing would have caused this many problems I would have slept the night in my car!

GDB2222

I'm confused daftbird. Are you after tea and sympathy? In which case um sorry. Or do you want an action plan? In which case, see the points above, and please let us know how you get on. It's not hard to issue proceedings, and if your contract is in a standard form you are almost bound to succeed.