How long to sign and complete???

Gemzee

Hello all! My partner and i have just struggled to buy our first house. We put our offer in on November 2nd 2006. Our mortgage was all agreed and the money was waiting to go by 15th December 2006. Hmmmm we are still waiting due to very slow solicitors! We were told that we would be able to move in at the end of Feb. So i changed by job, registered our son at a new nursery and gave notice to our landlord. We have to move out on 23rd and we have been told today it now wont exchange for 21 days due to the land registry taking thier time!!! :mad: Do we have any rights??? We are in a real pickle!! P.s there is no chain either side so i dont understand whats going on!

lotto-dreamer

Why is the Land Registry involved at this stage?

Usually, it is only when matter completes (you have moved into your home) that the solicitors make the application to Land Registry to have the property registered into your name.

What have your solicitors told you?

Is the property unregistered perhaps? (i.e. it has been in the seller's ownership for a very long time and has not changed hands since registration became compulsory). Are you buying from a deceased estate?

Boundary problems which need to be resolved?

Issues with rights of way to be resolved?

You probably need to ask them exactly what the hold up is -it's usually someone further down the chain! so that certainly isn't your problem here. Check with the estate agents as well.

Gemzee

Yes the guy who owned it orignally died and he had lived there since it was built. I have spoken to the solicitor this morning and he has told us that there wasn't a problem with registering as such, but there is a dispute over the garden size and we should get another foot of land. To be honest i couldn't care less about a foot of garden considering we will be homeless very shortly! Do solicitors live in the real world? And isnt this something we can sort out should we wish to?

gingerdad

Give them an ultimatum that it must be completed by x or you will pull out. Possibly risky but we had to do it and what was taking an age suddenly all happened. But you would need to per prepared to follow through. I thought it was worth the risk in our case, but didn’t really want to loose the house.

Regards

GD

lotto-dreamer

but there is a dispute over the garden size and we should get another foot of land.

this means that whoever is currently using/owns the extra foot of land is now involved as well while the boundaries are agreed. It could certainly take some time -

If the property is empty and there is no chain - you might be able to exchange and get something like a licence to occupy while this is being sorted.

I am NOT an authority on this (I'm not a solicitor) but I have seen something like this done recently where a small piece of land at the back of a new build was not actually registered in the developer's name. While it was being resolved, contracts were exchanged and the purchasers moved in and paid rent to the developer (contract had various special conditions to cater for all this). It might be worthwhile asking your solicitor about the possibility of something like this in your circumstances to save you being homeless.