Please help unravel the solicitors jargon

arkhan42

Hi

The reason we havent exchanged today is the following:

Your Vendors solicitors have now confirmed that on their linked purchase transaction, their Vendors solicitors now await a settlement figure from a second mortgage lender before they will exchange contracts

What does this mean??

Any help would be appreciated

princessamy86

I *think* this is right: Your vendor (vendor 1) is buying another house. The people whose house they are buying (vendor 2) have 2 charges registered on the property (which basically means that 2 different lenders have lent money which is secured on the property). Vendor 2 will not be able to sell their house if the proceeds of the sale do not cover the total amount from both lenders which is secured on the house. Unfortunately this could take a few weeks to sort out, the solicitors won't let the exchange happen until they are sure there is enough money to cover what is owed, as the solicitors will have to make up any shortfall. Hope that makes sense.

arkhan42

Thankyou for your help

lincroft1710

If I was paying a solicitor to act for me and he/she sent me a letter I didn't understand, the first thing I would do would be to ring them and ask what the ???? they were on about.

Solicitors often wrongly believe that their clients have the same understanding of legal jargon as they do.

arkhan42

Also in answer to this, we were told yesterday by my vendors solicitors they were ready to exchange, why would we get to this point and then find out that all the financial stuff wasnt in place??

princessamy86

I don't think it's your vendor's solicitors who are holding things up here, they wouldn't have known about the double charges on the Vendor 2's property as it's down to Vendor 2's solicitors to check it out. I bet your vendors are just as frustrated as you.

Sammy85_2

arkhan42 wrote: »

Also in answer to this, we were told yesterday by my vendors solicitors they were ready to exchange, why would we get to this point and then find out that all the financial stuff wasnt in place??

Your vendors solicitors may be ready, but your vendors vendors solicitors are not. Its all way up the chain.

Richard_Webster

If I was paying a solicitor to act for me and he/she sent me a letter I didn't understand, the first thing I would do would be to ring them and ask what the ???? they were on about.

Solicitors often wrongly believe that their clients have the same understanding of legal jargon as they do.

However hard we try to dejargonise we never completely succeed, and it is important that people do ask for explanations of things they don't understand. Maybe next time when explaining a similar point we can think more about how we do it.

clutton_2

Richard - i take your point- but you always manage to explain things on here with utter clarity and so if you can... why can't other solicitors ?

rhetorical question really - as you can only speak for youself on here - and we really value that - thanks for giving us your precious time over and over again

timmyt

arkhan42 wrote: »

Hi

The reason we havent exchanged today is the following:

Your Vendors solicitors have now confirmed that on their linked purchase transaction, their Vendors solicitors now await a settlement figure from a second mortgage lender before they will exchange contracts

What does this mean??

Any help would be appreciated

i am curious...which words do people not understand....'vendor' ? or do you understand the sentence but want to know why an exchnage needs to be delayed?

in short that sentence is 'someone needs to know how much is owing on a second mortgage'...why? because they could be selling a house with negative equity with borrowing higher than the sale price...

Richard_Webster

Richard - i take your point- but you always manage to explain things on here with utter clarity and so if you can... why can't other solicitors ?

Oh, thank you, Clutton. That is very reassuring! Maybe it's because I have time to think what I am writing - but when I speak, it doesn't always get through so well - my wife is quite sure that people are very confused by my explanations!

On the particular case I think I would have added something like "I assume this is because they are concerned that there might not be sufficient money from the sale of that property to pay off both mortgages."

Also, I think in this kind of case I would have phoned the client to explain because that would have been easier than putting it in writing but maybe the solicitors couldn't get hold of their client on the phone when they needed to so wrote a letter instead.