wrongful exchange of contracts

klolav

Is it not standard that your solicitor should call you first to confirm you are happy to go ahead with exchange before doing so? Or is that just out of courtesy?
You've had some very good advice above and I really wish you all the best in getting it sorted asap. Good luck

princeofpounds

You probably want to look into the process of proper complaints and the legal ombudsman.

http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/choosingandusing/redressscheme.law

There are also solicitors who specialise in dealing with disputes with other solicitors (if you like, vultures who eat dead vultures!). You might wish to speak to one, this is unfortunately very serious and beyond the scope of a forum.

As has been just mentioned, don't freak out if your current solicitor ditches you and denies all liability. They have to do this for their inusrance if the disputes escalates far enough.

chesneyoctopus

Just out of interest, is the solicitor a "high street" firm, or an on line one?

sonastin

princeofpounds wrote: »

As has been just mentioned, don't freak out if your current solicitor ditches you and denies all liability. They have to do this for their inusrance if the disputes escalates far enough.

Another thing it is worth trying to bear in mind when you're trying to keep a cool head about this: it is in your interest to help this solicitor keep his insurers on side. If it ends up being big money, that could be the only place the money is coming from.

Your heart my be telling you "stuff him. he scr*wed this up. I want him to pay. Why should I help him?" but if the sums involved get big enough, it could be enough to put the solicitor out of business which could severely restrict your chances of getting any money out of him. Legally and morally you could be in the right but that doesn't help if there's no money to change hands.

The legal position will be that it is you who owes the vendors regardless of your relationship with the solicitor and the solicitor's liability is to pay you back anything that you pay out. So if he goes out of business, you'd still have a legal debt to the vendor.

So if his insurers require him to drop you like a hot coal in order for them to provide cover, respect that. Don't get tempted to try and do any side deals or ask for any can-you-just's. It could cause you much bigger problems down the line.

livrules

chesneyoctopus wrote: »

Just out of interest, is the solicitor a "high street" firm, or an on line one?

The solicitor is a high street firm. They have about 10 offices.

Thanks again for all the advise everyone. We have spoken to an ombudsman who thinks the solicitor made a mistake and suggests the email proves we have a valid claim.

We spoke to the solicitor this morning (now in receipt of the email which he claims he 'missed') who is VERY apologetic and admitting his mistake. A couple of the suggestions above made me really stop and think about the repercussions about screaming and shouting about this right now. We are determined to follow the sale of our flat through to completion (it took a year to sell) and don't want the solicitor to drop us for that reason. We are playing it cool with the solicitor for now but have already started a complaint file with the ombudsman which we plan on pursuing once we have moved. He said we have 12 months to act now that we have officially complained.

Some of the advise on here stopped me from losing it on the solicitor. He screwed up big time and should be financially accountable for that. However, I'm sure if I had released the full extent of my rage at this stage, it would have been a big mistake. Thanks again for inspiring me to stay calm and focused which I believe will pay off in the end.....

klolav

so what is happening with your purchase? Still going ahead at the agreed price?

Richard_Webster

Also there should have been some phone calls about the completion date.

If you were only selling then he should have checked how quickly you could move out. If he thought you were buying and selling he would be asking you to check about your removals to the new place.

I suppose it is posisble that all he said was "is xx date OK for completion?" and you said "Yes" thinking he was only referring to the sale

However usually there would be some reminders from him like - "You have your removals arranged for then haven't you?" You might have said that you would move stuff out the weekend before to wherever you were going - which would have indicated to him that the purchase was not to proceed. He might have then pointed out you couldn't put stuff in the purchase property until the day of completion at which point you would have said "but we aren't buying yet...."

Think about the communications just before the exchange because I can't see how there couldn't have been some clues about your intentions there.

I'd have been worried the other way -"Why are they wanting to exchange ion both when they were concerned about the underpinning and I would have phoned to check, if I had any doubts - "You really do want to go ahead on both now, do you?"

livrules

klolav wrote: »

so what is happening with your purchase? Still going ahead at the agreed price?

Yes we are. We really do love the house - that was never in question. The problem is that we believe that we had enough evidence from 2 surveys (one HB report and a damp specialist survey) to re-negotiate our initial offer. The under-valuing alone (which we only found out about 3 hrs before our solicitor exchanged) was 18k. We certainly weren't going to ask them to accept 18k off our initial offer but in consideration of the damp report, the under-valuing and other somewhat urgent defects, we believe that it would have been reasonable to ask for at least 5k off. We will not have that opportunity now. Further, the under-pinning was found to be structurally sound (thank god) but we wanted the insurance they had on it transferred to us. We now have to just rely on the good faith of the vendor to do that rather than have it in writing.

klolav

Well i'm glad that you like the house and wish you all the best with it. So when is completion?
I hope all the legal side of things work out for you!

livrules

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Also there should have been some phone calls about the completion date.

If you were only selling then he should have checked how quickly you could move out. If he thought you were buying and selling he would be asking you to check about your removals to the new place.

I suppose it is posisble that all he said was "is xx date OK for completion?" and you said "Yes" thinking he was only referring to the sale

However usually there would be some reminders from him like - "You have your removals arranged for then haven't you?" You might have said that you would move stuff out the weekend before to wherever you were going - which would have indicated to him that the purchase was not to proceed. He might have then pointed out you couldn't put stuff in the purchase property until the day of completion at which point you would have said "but we aren't buying yet...."

Think about the communications just before the exchange because I can't see how there couldn't have been some clues about your intentions there.

I'd have been worried the other way -"Why are they wanting to exchange ion both when they were concerned about the underpinning and I would have phoned to check, if I had any doubts - "You really do want to go ahead on both now, do you?"

Thank you for your reply

We received a phone call asking us if we wanted to go ahead with the sale (of our flat) which of course we said yes to. We never received a call asking us if we wanted to go ahead with the purchase. For both sale and purchase, we were never asked about removals, we never authorized the transfer of money (deposit) or even how much we would be leaving as a deposit. We honestly made it very clear to him that the sale of our flat was not dependent on the purchase. Quite simply, he didn't listen and couldn't be bothered the read the email properly. He is suddenly very apologetic now that he knows we have written evidence (that he ignored) instructing him not to proceed until our inquiries were answered satisfactorily.

As you said "Think about the communications just before the exchange because I can't see how there couldn't have been some clues about your intentions there" - you are absolutely right. We were clear about holding exchange until the issues were resolved. Maybe he has a high work load - who knows? But truly, the situation really is as inconceivable as it sounds. At some point, we do want to make a claim against him but are unsure how to approach it tbh - what exactly to claim for? I don't want to put anyone out of business but someone at that firm needs to take account for such serious negligence.