complaint re solicitor

6grandchildren

Hi, anyone any advice please. my husband and i moved house earlier this year and employed a solicitor to do the work, we paid our bill in full to him before completion. however now four months later we have discovered that he has never registered our new property with the land registry dept.
even though on his bill it showed £220 land registry fees.

I have had no communication with him since before the completion, we only found out we had completed because my son in law chased him for an answer.

I have emailed him and sent a letter by post, asking him to complete his work and to give me answers, I have no deeds, no documents nothing, other than a copy statement for the bill which shows we have paid in full with thanks.

we dont have a mortgage so no lender to go to for advice. he is a sole worker, even though the name of the firm suggests partners, we discovered that he is working alone in the practice so no other person in there to go to for help

how do we prove we are the owners of our property, should we have deeds, who do we complain to?

any suggestions?

thanks

sarahg1969

Firstly, you own the property, so you can stop worrying about that.

How have you found out that he has not registered the property? It's possible that he's not very good at dealing with stuff like that, but he should have done it within 3 months (at least that's what to used to be when I did conveyancing) - maybe there's some kind of backlog somewhere? But he should certainly have done his bit by now.

As for the deeds, has he ever mentioned keeping them for you, or asked you what you wanted to do with them? The likelihood is that he has them kept in a safe place for you, so you don't need to worry too much about that, either.

KeithP

Do deeds have a value these days? Now that properties are registered.

Other than curiosity value that is.

DVardysShadow

sarahg1969 wrote: »

Firstly, you own the property, so you can stop worrying about that.

How have you found out that he has not registered the property? It's possible that he's not very good at dealing with stuff like that, but he should have done it within 3 months (at least that's what to used to be when I did conveyancing) - maybe there's some kind of backlog somewhere? But he should certainly have done his bit by now.

As for the deeds, has he ever mentioned keeping them for you, or asked you what you wanted to do with them? The likelihood is that he has them kept in a safe place for you, so you don't need to worry too much about that, either.

Stop worrying? NO! Alarm Bells are ringing. It has not been registered with the Land Reg, it is a sole practitioner, no word of explanation.

OP: Go to the Law Society in the first instance. They will refer you to the appropriate body to deal with the complaint.

sarahg1969

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Stop worrying? NO! Alarm Bells are ringing. It has not been registered with the Land Reg, it is a sole practitioner, no word of explanation.

OP: Go to the Law Society in the first instance. They will refer you to the appropriate body to deal with the complaint.

Yes, but they have moved into the house, and we don't even know the full story. At the moment, it all sounds a bit hysterical. Yes, they probably have a crappy solicitor who's not great at dealing with stuff, but the OP needs to provide some more information.

A complaint to the LCS may well be in order, but we don't really know what's happened.

DVardysShadow

sarahg1969 wrote: »

Yes, but they have moved into the house, and we don't even know the full story.

I take the OP at face value

At the moment, it all sounds a bit hysterical. Yes, they probably have a crappy solicitor who's not great at dealing with stuff, but the OP needs to provide some more information.

I agree with your assessment of the likely problem with the solicitor, but I cannot describe the OP as hysterical, not even slightly. This has to be picked up and followed through - remember the OP does not have a mortgage, so no lender to chase things to conclusion [which might explain why solicitor is lax]

6grandchildren

sarahg1969 wrote: »

Yes, but they have moved into the house, and we don't even know the full story. At the moment, it all sounds a bit hysterical. Yes, they probably have a crappy solicitor who's not great at dealing with stuff, but the OP needs to provide some more information.

A complaint to the LCS may well be in order, but we don't really know what's happened.

I can assure you that I am not hysterical, but concerned, I dont do hysterical, i am a practising counsellor and used to dealing with issues, particularly stress!!

I could give a very detailed story, but tried to put down only the most necessary detail. I found out the property hadnt been registered because I get emailed to me via webpage called upmystreet properties that have been sold within my postcode area, on that webpage i noted that one month after we left our old house that property was listed, presumably because it had been registered by the buyers solicitor, so i thought my new address would be there, but it wasnt, neither was it there for the following 2 months, having checked i have discovered he has never registered the property.

as for the deeds, no he never offered to store them for us, so that covers that point. if he had kept me informed, i would be concerned but not worried, the fact he has done nothing and that includes not keeping me informed, worries me.

thanks for your responses anyway,

i am going to ring the law society today, because having read all their document, it appears that their time scale for a solicitor to respond is 28 days, he has well exceded that, and also it states there, failing to do work that he has been paid to do also warrants investigation.

i will let you know the outcome.

thanks

Colin2511

in one of our previous houses, we received a letter from the Law society approx 18 months after we had moved in explaining that they were taking action against our solicitor, and that ours was one of "a number" that had not been registered, The law society told us that they had seen all our paperwork, and would register it without delay (and then we got a letter a short while after to confirm this)

We were knew at the housing game and did not realise that it had not all been done, apparently our solicitor had been taking everyones money for registering and never got around to it, when a complaint was raised with the law society it all came out.

I cannot remember what happened to him (it was in the press at the time), I think he was struck off (although there were several other things they found), he certainly closed his practice in the town

6grandchildren

Hi colin sorry to hear about your unhappy experience but glad it came good and was highlighted for you.

sadly a similar thing happened to us before with another solicitor, we were not aware there was a problem like you, but we hadnt got to the completion stage, the first we knew was like you a letter from law society explaining the solicitor had .........cant remember how they worded it, but what it meant was he had left the practice having taken all his clients money, they appointed another solicitor to complete the work, and struck him off, maybe it was the same one? so solicitors arnt someone i completely trust as my experiences havent been good ones.

Tozer

Couple of points:

1. There are no deeds. There will be a Land Certificate but it is not of the same worth as the old fashioned deeds. The Land Registry is the important evidence of title.

2. There is no 28 day period within which a solicitor should respond. Clearly, it is a decent length of time and I would have got back to you. Try calling him. Sure, he should have registered the transaction but it is not now too late. Assuming that there have not been any other transactions on the house (equity release, sublease, sale of part, etc) then there should be no harm done.

3. Was the property bought for an amount more than the then applicable stamp duty level? If so and he has definitely not registered the purchase then I doubt he has produced the docs for stamping. Did you pay for this?

6grandchildren

hi, not sure what you mean in point 3, we have paid for stamp duty at the rate which is in force, the property is over £250k so i think it was 3%. re phoning him, we did try, we never get him. his secretary takes messages he never returns the calls.

re the deeds, i had heard that on an internet site, but what do you mean the certificate is worth less than the old fashion deeds?

thanks