solicitor now unable to receive mortgage offer

angie1976

hi all
hoping for some advice as our buying of our 1st house has come to a standstill.
I will try to keep it brief!
we are now 14 weeks into the proicess and last week believed it was nearly over when we were called into the solicitor to complete. all signed and paid for including deposit the next day we got a call telling us that the solicitor didnt have a copy of the revised mortgage offer (we had a price reduction)
after a week the truth has come out that between the first and second offer our solicitor has been taken off the banks list of aproved solicitors we are told this is quite common with companies with only one solicitor (unsure how true this is)
financial advisor knew about this and gave our details to another compand to get the offer and receive funds on our solicitors behalf (meaning without our permission our details have been shared)
for the last 6 weeks instead of letting the other company deal with this our solicitor has been fighting to get back on the list.
basically we dont care who delas with it we just want it done ASAP and are more than a little annoyed we have paid all our fees under a pretence and feel a bit cheated.
today we are told that the bank will not back down but still our solicitor is uncontactable:mad:
anyone experienced this or able to give advice about what to do????

WestonDave

It is increasingly common. In a normal mortgage backed purchase the solicitor has two clients - you as the purchaser to ensure all the legal parts of ownership are dealt with, and the lender to ensure that the legal charge over the property that enables them to get their money back if you default is all properly enforceable. Just as you have a free choice who you have as solicitor, so does the lender. Up until relatively recently they were fairly relaxed about having most solicitors on their "panel" (i.e. their list of approved solicitors). However due to a number of firms going bust or having other problems, they have tightened up a lot, with sole practitioners being seen as highest risk (lack of supervision, lack of cover if ill etc etc). By the looks of it your solicitor has just proved why he shouldn't be on the list! He's uncontactable and as there is no-one else in the firm you are high and dry.

Your best bet is to see if you can get your file transferred to another firm - you will have to pay the original firm for work done to date before they will release it, but its possibly your only option to get things moving.

You may want to check the lists on the SRA website to see if the firm has in fact been closed down (technically called an intervention) by the SRA.

angie1976

thanks Dave
do you know how we can get money back from him then for work he is now unable to do?