Didn't complete on completion day!

dodger1

Emma18 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. We requested a copy of our file from the solicitors over 2 weeks ago now and still have not received it, or in fact a reply of any form from the solicitor involved or the partner, as requested.

Hope you requested it in writing and sent by recorded delivery. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds and who the solicitor blames.

sonastin

Well that shoots down one of their potential defences. In terms of legal liability, as I understand it, you are only entitled to the costs incurred due to their failure i.e. your liability to the seller, the additional removal costs, hotel costs over the weekend, etc. As a goodwill gesture, they might refund their fee too but that will only be their element of the fee - disbursements will have already been paid out to third parties. In terms of the emotional stuff, you can claim the purely financial aspects of that - i.e. nowt! (unless you can demonstrate that you've had expensive counselling and it was entirely reasonable for the solicitor to know, at the time that you instructed him, that a f*ck up on his part would more than likely cause you to incur expensive emotional counselling - so as I said, realistically nowt!).

Emma18

A response!

Hubby had email from solicitor today which basically blames the bank, saying that they had the wrong title plan number so their surveyor would not 'sign-off' the property against the mortgage as it appeared to be for a completely diff property!

By their own admission in one doc, the quality of the title plan was not great and the bank/surveyor said it was too faint for them to clearly examine and sign-off anyway.......

Do we blame the bank for getting the wrong title no to the surveyor - is the solicitor equally to blame for sending a poor quality title plan?

they have included selected docs (not our entire file, which they say contains irrelevant docs and if we want them all copied they will charge us £95 + VAT for)

These docs do appear to show that the solicitor sent the correct title plan no to the bank.......

We are going to have to sit down tonight and go through it all! May have to go up to their office to see the entire file. Presumably it would be illegal(?) for them to 'hide' certain docs from us......?

Overall, I just still feel that with only 4 days to go to completion and the solicitor knew there was a problem between the surveyor and the bank with a poor quality title plan document, they should have been 'on the ball' and a lot more pro-active in chasing the parties to ensure everything was in place for the completion date. The solicitor asks the bank to send the money to it's client account on the day BEFORE completion.....so even then surely, the day before - the solicitor MUST have know that there was a problem with completing when the money didn't arrive! Why the heck didn't the solicitor phone us the day before - we could have got it sorted on the Friday and still completed!

(as I had said originally - long story - but, on completion day, after 6 hours of phone calls between my hubby and the surveyor and bank, HE managed to get people to do the necessary things and HE sorted the problem - the bank declared they were happy to release the money....it was just too late in the day and our sellers would not co-operate!)

Will come back and keep you updated on this one!

Thanks again for all your input!

G_M

timmyt wrote: »

I did a huge reply to you only for MSE to ask for new log in and then froze. Sort it out MSE I now have to retype later tonight.

But in a nutshell OP, the problem is not your fault so write with an official complaint (ignoring what they have so far said to you) and say that as your lawyer they were in charge and if the invoices are not settled you will have no choice bu tot report the issue to the Legal Ombudsman http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/

Short, succinct, helpful, literate, compehensible and with none of the usual rambling tirade against fellow conveyancers.

Don't tell me you're mellowing Timmy?

Please spare us the 'huge reply' though.

Emma18

erm.....I'd like to see your detailed opinion Timmyt if OK with you...!

I'm assuming you are a conveyancer....as someone who knows his stuff (presumably!) I'd be really interested to hear your take on it. Any arguments we can use to the solicitors to back us up ?

thanks

AlexSnow

It is unusual for the bank to require a copy of the title deeds before completion. The normal process is that the conveyancer gives a Certificate of Title to the bank which basically confirms that the conveyancer has checked everything etc etc. Did the bank instruct your solicitor or their own to act for them? If the bank had their own solicitor that could be part of the problem!

As for charging £95 for a copy of your file that probably won't be agreed to be reasonable by the Ombudsman as the file belongs to you, if the solicitors want to keep a copy for their own records (I suspect they will especially if you have a mortgage) that is their responsibility. If you were asking for it in 4 years time and they had to retrieve it from storage then a fee may be allowable but otherwise I suspect not.

Alex

KateLiana27

The solicitor is liable to you.

He is the one who failed in his duty to ensure completion took place on the agreed date.

If he feels the bank were to blame, it is his job to claim costs back from the bank - once he has reimbursed you. Not yours.

Emma18

Further to all the messages so far, we have received letter and correspondence from our solicitor which shows that they faxed the bank on the Monday (4 days before completion due on the Friday) and the document proves that they KNEW there was a problem between the bank and the banks surveyors and that things were NOT all approved and ready to go for the Friday.

The solicitor also enclosed another fax sent on the Thursday that shows that she KNEW that the funds were not being released by the bank into her client account ready for the Friday.

She did not phone us until 10.30am on the Friday - day of completion to tell us that there was a problem.

My hubby sorted out the problem between the bank and the surveyor in approx 4 hours on completion day but were short of time by approx 1 hour in order to get the funds transferred.

We have drafted a formal complaint basically saying that as the solicitor knew of the problem 4 days before completion, did not tell us about it til the Friday - coupled with the fact that my hubby proved the matter could be dealt with in one afternoon - we feel that she was entirely negligent in her duty to perform the service for which we were paying her for..

Does this sound a fair complaint and what do you think of our chances?

We have also now received receipts from our sellers totalling approx £900 that we have to pay them. If we send our formal complaint and the receipts to the solicitors stating that we expect them to pay them direct - where do we stand legally to our sellers - as admittedly the contract was with us. Will we have to pay them first and then pursue our solicitors? How long would we have to pay them before they try and sue us for even more money?

Finally (for now!) can anyone tell me the difference between 'Certificate of Title' and 'Title Deed' because the bank tells us that they requested the title DEED but solicitor sent Certificate of Title - and had to be chased and she only sent deed on the monday - 4 days before completion. The solicitor is claiming that the bank sent the wrong title plan number to their surveyor and that this caused the hold up......!

look forward to hearing from you!

GDB2222

KateLiana27 wrote: »

The solicitor is liable to you.

He is the one who failed in his duty to ensure completion took place on the agreed date.

If he feels the bank were to blame, it is his job to claim costs back from the bank - once he has reimbursed you. Not yours.

I am sorry to be blunt, but this is dangerous nonsense. People seem to have a false idea that a solicitor is a sort of fairly godmother, who is responsible if anything at all goes wrong. In fact, the solicitor is only responsible for matters under the solicitor's own control. If the solicitor sent the documents off late or they were not of sufficient quality that is the solicitor's fault (and it sounds like it in this case).

However, you say that even if the bank were to blame, then the solicitor is still liable. That's dangerous nonsense.

F_T_Buyer

This should have all been sorted before exchange, and the solicitor usually requests the money a day before completion.

So, what costs are the other parties demanding due to this error? Did the seller of your house have to buy another, hence that was also delayed?