2nd Charge on a Property

goldiewil

Thanks a lot for the advise, I will be speaking to another solicitor this evening and will pursue it along those lines.

Bossyboots

dougk wrote:

They cannot keep your deposit as it was not given to them for funding their fees and should return it in full, otherwise I would class this as theft and report it to the police and the law society.

Sorry, but this is incorrect. They have the right to exercise a lien over any property/assets they have in order to recover their fees. Therefore, they can deduct their fees from the deposit money when it is returned. This is a right under common law.

One solution to this is to contact the seller's solicitor direct, inform them that your original solicitors are now disinstructed and that you require return of the deposit direct to you. This may or may not work and you could still be chased for fees but despite what was put here earlier, I agree with doughk that the fault likes with the failure to obtain another search before exchange. This was particularly important in view of the gap between the first one and actual exchange.

silvercar

I thought thecharge was put on the property between exchange and completion. Compounded by the failure of the seller to tell his solicitor that the charge had been put on by a court after exchange had occured.

Bossyboots

silvercar wrote:

I thought thecharge was put on the property between exchange and completion. Compounded by the failure of the seller to tell his solicitor that the charge had been put on by a court after exchange had occured.

No, this is what goldiewill says

i have just downloaded the charge document from the Land registry website and found out that the charge was put on the property on 8th June 2006, although the initial court order to pay the outstanding amount was in March 2006.
There are actually two charge amounts of appprox £4K and £10k.

As the initial searches were done early in May and we exchanged on 17th July, is our solicitor right in allowing us to exchange almost 2 1/2 months after the searches were done?

Therefore the charge has been registered between searching and exchange and the length of time between the two should have been a nudge to redo them.

silvercar

I stand corrected. I wonder how many solicitors redo searches immediately prior to exchange?

Bossyboots

silvercar wrote:

I stand corrected. I wonder how many solicitors redo searches immediately prior to exchange?

It should be standard as the search results are only valid for a specified period of time which I think is only four weeks. If you exchange in that period, you would be okay but once that time expires, you must do another search. In this particular case we are not even talking just a few days lapse but several weeks. It really should not have happened if the solicitor had been on the ball.

epoman

Posters here are clearly mixing up the various searches that need to be done and it's very dangerous to offer legal advice when you are not qualified to do so.

Checking the title of the property, raising requisitions on title and conducting land charge and registry searches are all POST EXCHANGE matters, so it is by no means certain that the OP's solicitor should have known pre exchange. If I get a chance I will talk to a conveyancing colleague tomorrow to see what his view is.

To the OP: Follow my advice to you in Post 42 and you won't go far wrong. Get your solicitor to explain the position (in writing) and then take alternative independent legal advice whether they have been negligent.

I'm not sure your solicitor can do any more than he has already done, namely serve a Notice to Complete in order to get your deposit back.