help - house sale gone wrong

cantwaittomove

My house sale (and purchase) fell through last month, sadly I am back to the start again with my house back on the market after spending a small fortune on fees and solicitors etc.

We received some post for the new buyers, which they never collected. Curiosity got the better of us and we decided to open the post – it appears that they had applied for a loan at our address.

We are very concerned that something fraudulent has occurred and could affect our credit rating.

I have tried to talk to the loan company who were quite obstructive and reluctant for any attention at all – telling us it is best to ignore the matter.

Can I ask if I should take this matter further? Should I pay for credit reports? Should I report the matter to the police? What should I do?

silvercar

Sounds like the new buyers, prematurely, assumed the sale was happening and used their new address for correspondence. A bit naive but not fraudulent. It is actually an offence to open someone else's mail. If you know their address you could forward it to them free of charge by crossing the address out on the envelope, writing in the correct one and putting it in a post box. Otherwise just write "not at this address" on the front and stick it in the box.

Credit records are now linked by financial ties rather than addresses so I doubt you have anything to worry about.

maninthestreet

Send it back to the sender with the following written on the envelope:

"Opened in error - not known at this address"

cantwaittomove

What worries me is that something untoward has occured.

According to our solicitor, they had already conceded that the sale would not go through due to lack of funds BEFORE the application was submitted according the dates on the paperwork.

It seems that the advice is to let this go - how can I be confident that this will be the end of this?

silvercar

cantwaittomove wrote:

According to our solicitor, they had already conceded that the sale would not go through due to lack of funds BEFORE the application was submitted according the dates on the paperwork.

People often use the excuse of a lack of funds to withdraw from buying a house.

The worst that can happen is you get more mail for these people. Returning it to sender unopened is the best bet.

If they were planning anything dodgy, they would have used your address and paid for the Royal Mail redirection service to forward the mail onto them without you knowing anything about it.

mystic_trev

cantwaittomove wrote:

It seems that the advice is to let this go - how can I be confident that this will be the end of this?

I expect they've obtained a copy of your Deeds, remortgaged your Property and !!!!!!ed off to Rio with the proceeds......









only joking!

lynzpower

could it have been a secured loan?/

Woby_Tide

silvercar wrote:

People often use the excuse of a lack of funds to withdraw from buying a house.

The worst that can happen is you get more mail for these people. Returning it to sender unopened is the best bet.

If they were planning anything dodgy, they would have used your address and paid for the Royal Mail redirection service to forward the mail onto them without you knowing anything about it.

Without you knowing anything about it apart from the letter from Royal Mail telling you that a redirection had been started for certain names (unless they set up a second redirection for all mail addressed to someone with surname "Occupier" first name "The")

Paul_Herring

silvercar wrote:

If they were planning anything dodgy, they would have used your address and paid for the Royal Mail redirection service to forward the mail onto them without you knowing anything about it.

Getting redirection done these days appears akin to not falling foul of money laundering regulations - at least that's the impression I got when I was looking into getting my mum's mail redirected.

pennylane99

If you wanted peace of mind, you could always check your credit file to see if any fraudulent loans etc have been taken out in your name/address.

Experian do a free trial, just remember to cancel before the 30 days is up.

http://www.joincreditexpert.com/freecreditreportint/?sc=410015&bcd=experianmonintercnov

Vickicb

We had a "buyer" early in 2006 who applied for lots of loans (secured) at our address, the difference to your case was that he did not only use our address, he used my husbands name. We reported it to the police and despite having recordings of telephone conversations a loan broker had with him impersonating my OH they were still reluctant to do anything about it.

If these loans are in your buyers name I think it's probably just them jumping the gun, but check your credit file just in case - a search of our credit files turned up in the region of 35 searches for secured loans and has totally messed up our credit rating.