Contract Terms For Non Completion

JustTakeAllMyMoney

Hi,

I’m going through the pain of moving at the moment selling and buying. Got a letter from solicitor today regarding terms in the contract for the place I’m purchasing, advising me to not accept the contract from my seller and the seller solicitor wont budge on any change. Now I’m not sure if my solicitor is covering her !!!!!! or the terms are unreasonable.

My solicitor is saying that 2 terms in the contract relating to 'Non completion' on the set day / time are too open ended. Basically if I don’t complete by the day / time, I have to cover the following costs of the seller,

- Pay any additional solicitor fees and cost and expenses my seller incurs as a result of the delay.
- Pay any additional mortgage interest my seller incurs due to delay, and bridging loan fees etc.
- There removal / moving costs.

Now that seems reasonable to me and pretty standard stuff, but my solicitor is saying it's too open ended and her advice is to not accept the contract, but if I dont the sale will fall through. I think she is referring to the 'all other expenses' being too open-ended.

I've only purchased 1 place before and this was never issue then so I don’t really know much about it. My solicitor did also forward on correspondence from the seller solicitors, my sellers solicitors view is that the terms are acceptable and if we didn’t accept it would be an unfair contract. I thought these kind of terms were pretty standard, from reading the sellers soliciotors letter it implies they always use these terms and there nothing out of the ordinary.

Anyway to get to point and in the absence of being able to talk to my solicitor (she should of called me about this :mad: ), what have others had in there contracts regarding non completion and there liabilities, are they very specific terms to what you would be liable for or open ended?

I can’t tell if my solicitor is just covering her !!!!!! or whether the terms are actually unreasonable. My solicitor says that if she advised me to accept the contract she would be negligent as she would have 'advised me to accept a position that has open ended liabilities', but if I'm ok with it she is happy to proceed for us as long as I give her written notice that she advised me of the issues and advised me not to proceed with the contract but I chose to go a head.

Bottom line is it would only happen if we didn’t complete, and the chain is small, a first time buyer is buying from me, and the person I’m buying from doesnt have a purchase dependent on me.

I willing to just say I accept the terms, it’s taken me 4 months to get this far in the sale. Anyone with knowledge in this area offer any advice ?