Seller pulled out a week before exchange & completion as lender has withdrawn offer

pmlindyloo

Our solicitors operated a Low Fee scheme. We paid £36 and 'if the purchase failed to proceedto legal completion than they will raise no further fee for their services' Disbursements aren't covered.

I have no idea what the final bill would have been if it had fallen through because fortunately it all went well. Might be worth checking out for the next time (or not, if someone comes along and says these schemes are rubbish!

RB1784

I feel like I may have been a mug about the solicitor as well now!! That is useful for the future, thanks.

hcb42

you might be ok , until you tell the solicitor you dont know. THey dont all charge the earth under these circs.

jahudson72

Never heard of a low fee scheme but it's unreasonable to expect your solicitor not to be paid because of something outside of their control. If they have done the work, they are entitled to be paid.

Sorry to hear your purchase has faltered though. That does suck.

motherofstudents

when this happened to us once, we only paid the solicitor a relatively small amount. then when we finally did manage to buy again we just carried on so they got their money in the end. They may not charge you so much if they think you are going to go back to them.

Scully38

This has happened to me twice before within the last 5 months, hoping that it doesn't happen for a third time as i'm due to exchange next week and complete Friday. With both my buyers I was 2 months into it and it was a few days before exchange, luckily i've only had to pay for search fees once and the costs on sols fees are under £1000, but I really know how you feel. There should be a law against it, but unfortunately there's not. There's also no way of finding out if you've been lied to. To keep my sale going through a 3rd time i'm going into a mobile home for a few weeks. But like you and quite a few other people on this board there's been quite a few recently that have lost the deal a few days before exchange. There's no way to recoup that money that you've lost as exchange nor completion took place.

All I can suggest is that you look at staying somewhere so you don't lose your sale, and the only upside is that at least you'll be in a really good position when you find a place again.

Good luck and i'm sorry this happened to you.

picardygirl

When we moved some five years ago, we went with the solicitor recommended by the Estate Agent, I know maybe not the best thing to have done, as could have had conveyancing done bit cheaper (about £100 more expensive) elsewhere but we chose a small local firm before when we moved the time before and they were awful, so decided to use the large firm recommended by the Estate Agent, it was a no completion no fee deal, and am so glad we chose them in the end, as our buyer pulled out day of exchange (six months into the process) ....... so I know how emotionally gutting it is, but was made slightly better by the fact we didnt have to pay solicitors fees, had to pay for searches and lost our survey fee on the house we lost (due to collapsed chain), when we eventually moved another six months later, our solicitors bill was for the work for one sale one purchase. Worked out well, for us, whether solicitors still offer no completion no fee i dont know, maybe with todays current climate they have stopped!

lizzywig

I don't know where you stand but went through the shared ownership scheme myself earlier this year. We were told that solictors fees and financial advisor fees were only payable on completion and that if we didn't complete then we wouldn't pay anything. That was us though but if I were you I would dig out all of your earlier correspondance with your FA and Solicitor.

Richard_Webster

You shouldn't have to pay Land Registry Fees and SDLT and the fee should not be the full one quoted as the solicitor will not have done the work after exchange of contracts nor had to complete the Land Registry application.

Moral here is that anyone buying a shared or former shared ownership property should be suspicious because the seller often doesn't understand what is needed and doesn't necessarily follow the rules.

I have one at the moment where even thought he seller has bought the 100% (and her solicitors tried to tell me she hadn't!) the Housing Association was supposed to have been given 6 weeks notice of th eporposed sale so it could decide whether to buy back the flat. Neither the seller nor her solicitors realised that they had to do that.