Answering questions preownership

Richard_Webster

Never say you are "not aware" of something because of the effect of a recent case which says that implies you made reasonable investigations.

I would say "The sellers have no actual knowledge of the property suffering from subsidence, but they are not experts nor have they carried out any investigations to verify this."

Anyway what on earth is the buyer's solicitor on about? These kinds of questions can only ever really be answered to the extent of a seller's knowledge. So if he told a porky it would usually be quite difficult to prove that this was the case unless the buyer could show that the seller must have known.

A buyer should make his own investigations like ringing up for an insurance quote. If there has been subsidence and the sellers didn't know about it it is quite likely that the insurance company will do so, as they exchange information about this kind of thing. I tell clients to organise their insurance before exchange of contracts so it can start from exchange.

One client didn't do this and tried to sort out the insurance on the day of completion only to find that the insurer wouldn't quote because of previous subsidence. Had he done what I told him we wouldn't have exchanged but would have required the seller to sort it out. In that case there was no evidence anywhere from any information we had been given that there had ever been any subsidence at the property and it wasn't in an area considered a high risk.

Benson

Thank you for your help everyone.

Richard, this is exactly what my solicitor has said so that we could exchange and thankfully we now have! She has basically told me everything what you state but the buyers solicitor wouldn't have it and as such they were both locking horns!

At least we can now move forwards

Thanks again!!