Vendors pull out AFTER exchange of contract

BornAtTheRightTime

Good luck Stu, it must be an awful time for you.

Catatonia

I hope you get a good solution out of all this stress. Fingers crossed for you.

irishjohn

any further news on this?

stutheobald

irishjohn wrote: »

any further news on this?

Well all the receipts for our costs are with the solicitor at the moment, just waiting for him to give me the next step and how to go about it.

stutheobald

Thought to update anyone still reading.

We had to have a long hard think about what to do. We had heard that they hadn't paid the fee to their estate agents for failing to complete so we were worried about their ability to pay any court ordered costs including any additional costs for our solicitors. As a result we decided to pursue this through the small claims court instead of throwing several thousand more pounds at our solicitor to take the case to court (we didn't fancy getting £10 a week for the rest of our lives).

We issued them with the costs and a demand letter and was contacted by their solicitor who informed us that they have had all their assets frozen by the courts over a previous dispute they are going through (he wouldn't say what) but that was why they pulled out of the house sale. Their solicitor seems to think that they will be bankrupt after this current case against them goes and told us not to hold out much hope of getting anything out of them. We will still be going ahead with a claim even though it is much less than it should be, in the hope of getting something.

This has left a really bitter taste in our mouths as we will be £5k out of pocket even if we get the maximum that the small claims court can give us, but the costs to go for the full amount became prohibitive when we were still trying to buy another house and needed all our spare cash...if and when anything else happens I will let you know

geoffky

There is a house meant for the wife and you out there. you just have not found it yet.The best of luck to you.

John_Pierpoint

Do you want to buy the house from the receiver in bankruptcy?
He would want a quick no problem sale rather than give it back to the mortgage company.
Who has got the mortgage on it?
It has probably fallen in value by 5K by now, just due to falling house prices.
This living death situation for the vendors might be your lucky break.
Keep your ears to the ground.

Mattski

I have just joined MSE and I’m adding this post because I’m worried that this thread may not provide the right information for someone who goes through the same experience as Welshwoofs. In short specific performance can be much easier than it appears from this thread.
The same thing happened to us last month – because of their own financing problems for their onward purchase our vendors had simply decided they weren’t going to sell. It completely knocked us for six as we were in Brazil on holiday at the time (we were completing whilst we were away and the plan was to come back to our new house already cleaned and with our things in), we have a 2.5 year old and my wife is nearly 5 months pregnant. All is all it was a nightmare situation and very worrying.
Shortly after I googled and this thread came up as #1. So, I went through all the pages and took notes. I was left with a clear impression that pushing for specific performance would be very time consuming and expensive and that damages was the only way out. This was also what the vendors were telling us. It had never happened to our conveyancing solicitor before and she seemed to be saying that damages was the normal way out too. In the circumstances we were considering this, however, realistically that would have been a huge and stressful headache for us – finding a new house in a rising London market, losing mortgage, next baby on the way, etc. Thankfully we had good solicitors who had a litigation department as well as providing conveyancing. Everything changed when, given our circumstances, we made it clear that we wanted the house. The solicitor suggesting getting a barrister’s opinion – this was the best £1000 I have ever paid for!
The barrister laid out the options, and made it clear that you can apply for specific performance to the high court as soon as the other side has refused to complete (although we gave them a chance to complete before doing this). And, there is an accelerated process for doing this through the high court called a summary judgement. We were meant to complete on 25 March and managed to get all the papers to court by 29 March. You have to give at least 4 working days to the other side so we set the court date for 8 April. By 7 April the other side had accepted that they had no case and agreed to a consent order paying all our legal costs, the contractual compensation and to vacate the property by 15 April. This was simply put before the judge on 8 April and he agreed (the other side didn’t turn up). So within 2 weeks of the completion date we managed to get certainty about our situation and we took ownership of the property within 3 weeks!
Clearly there is a whole story to this, but I don’t want to highjack this post with our story. I will start another thread to provide further details if that is helpful/interesting for others.

DVardysShadow

Mattski wrote: »

.... And, there is an accelerated process for doing this through the high court called a summary judgement. We were meant to complete on 25 March and managed to get all the papers to court by 29 March. You have to give at least 4 working days to the other side so we set the court date for 8 April. By 7 April the other side had accepted that they had no case and agreed to a consent order paying all our legal costs, the contractual compensation and to vacate the property by 15 April. This was simply put before the judge on 8 April and he agreed (the other side didn’t turn up).

Thanks for giving your experience to show how it can work out, it does put things in a different light. As I understand it, a summary judgement is applied where the facts are not in dispute. I would not call it an accelerated process so much as a shortcut in the normal process which resolves the matter before it comes to trial if the facts are not disputed.

It would be a fairly foolish defendant who would try to argue that there was not a contract, or that if there was a contract, it was not for what the contract said on the tin. However, if the defendant disputed this issues, then there would be no summary judgement, there would be a trial which the defendant would roundly lose on the facts - and pay all the costs for.

I imagine that welshwoofs could have won a case in the same way as you did, but in the end she was happier with the other house and the overall outcome, so no great loss there.

Are you actually in yours yet?

Mattski

Yes we were in on Friday.

I'm not a lawyer but my understanding was that even if the other side contests, if the judge can resolve the issue based purely on the factual evidence in Front of him then there is no problem.

In our case he had the contract, written correspondence between the two law firms and two expert witness statements, one from the conveyancing solicitor and another from her paralegal - this all went in when we filed the proceeding. I'm guessing the vendors may have got an opinion from counsel (i.e. a barrister) who made it clear that they had no case - hence why in the end they agreed to a consent order.