solicitor problems

crowdedhouse

Help me please. I am at my wits end. This is very detailed but I will cut a long story short.

We have been trying to buy our housing association house through right to acquire. We received a valuation and agreed to buy in September 09, secured a mortgage and instructed a solicitor.

We left the solicitor and HA to do their work and by Dec 09 we hadn’t heard anything! By this point we were getting concerned as we knew that in Jan 10 we would have to pay stamp duty (the holiday which is something we wanted of take advantage of) In Dec 09 we heard from our mortgage company saying that our offer was to expire. Our solicitor told us they would contact the HA to hurry things along. She said we could go in and sign the contracts.

We went in to sign and the money was released from the mortgage company over to the HA solicitors and our solicitor told us that we have a problem with a shared path but they will review this and sign as soon as they get into the office after new year but we may have to pay rent up to this date but no longer. We agreed to sign on her advice.

So we cancelled our direct debit for rent as the solicitor had said they would sign as soon as they get back from New Year and we had paid in advance anyway. Months later they still hadn’t signed their part and told us that their was no dispute with a shared path and now we have to pay stamp duty, £1500 rent, the mortgage that was released as of Dec 09 and legal fees.

I can’t help but feel that we should not be paying rent and a mortgage when our solicitor repeatedly told us to ignore the rent letters and that we own our house.

Oh by the way, we signed contracts in Dec 09 and only found out that we are not legal owners of our house today despite paying a mortgage on it?

DVardysShadow

Did your solicitor actually exchange contracts?
Did your solicitor ask you for stamp duty and did you pay?

[Anyone else with more questions like these?]

It seems to me that you may not have paid something you were told to pay and the solicitor has not put the sale through

betmunch

You need to look at the Land registry for your house.

It will show you who owns it and the date the current owner took ownership of the property.

There are two outcomes here I think.
1. You own it. Pay what is owed to the Taxman if you took ownership after Dec09 and any rent due to the date you bought it.
2. You do not own it. Tell your mortgage company that you are paying a mortgage on a house that you dont own and they have no charge over. Then tell the solicitor you want the mortgage paid back and any costs you have incured paid by them.

if the solicitor has drawn down the money for you they would have sent it to the HA to complete the sale, I suspect you have nothing to worry.
I hope you will find this is just a typical case of poor communication between departments at the HA.

if it is anything other than simple to sort out get yourself down to the CAB and get some proper legal advice from a different solicitor.

Oh, and please let us know what happens

Cheers