advice on taking advisor to small claims court

Billiamg

We are currently going through the process of buying our first house. We started the mortgage application at the end on November 2011 and are still waiting to complet. If we do not complete by the 24th of this month will have to pay stamp duty which we cannot afford so the mortgage will fall through. We will also lose the solicitors fees and also our fee to our mortgage advisor. Then well have go through the whole process again once we have saved for the stamp duty.

At each stage of the application process our advisor has caused delays by either not doing things quick enough or just not passing on the right information to relevant parties. We think this has caused us weeks in delays when the mortgage should be completed by now.

I am considering if there is any chance that we could take our advisor to court to claim this lost money back - if we do miss the stamp duty rise - due to poor practice on his side.

Does any one have any advice on this matter and if it is at feasible?

opinions4u

Forget courts.

Make an official complaint to the adviser / firm involved.

Ask them to make good any losses, such as stamp duty, that will be incurred as a result of their poor administration.

See what response you get.

If you're not happy with the response, ask them to reconsider or issue a letter of deadlock.

Once you have this, or 8 weeks have passed without resolution, escalate your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman (FOS). This is free.

If you don't like the outcome from the FOS then you could still take it to court. But if you haven't succeeded by this stage yout chances of success in court will be slim.

Simply flagging your concerns officially NOW may get things moving the way you want.

What's delaying things at this point in time?

The_J

Do you have your mortgage offer yet? If so then you have plenty of time to complete.

Who did you apply with?

Everything that opinions4u has said is accurate.

DannyboyMidlands

How much will the stamp duty be? Surely you have some emergency fund you can use?

betmunch

Cant see the Small Claims Court being interested (although happy to be proven wrong) but follow opinions4u advice, thats more likely to get you a result

handytips

Big question still not answered as far as i can see is. Do you have a mortgage offer ? If not there is obviously something wrong with your application or your credit file, dont be to hasty to jump on the back of your advisor until the full picture is known.

holly_hobby

Following on from O4U's post.

Your post indicates that the issues is the cessation of FTB SDLT incentive of nil rate up to 250K, which expires on 24 March 2012, thereafter reverting to standard 125K.

What stage is your application at ? If there is no chance/you do not complete by 24 March 2012, and it is proven that this is solely due to the advisors actions - you may have an issue to be raised, but extra costs/delay incurred as a SOLE and DIRECT result of the advisors negligence, would need to be proven in any justified complaint.

Ensure your letter of complaint is concise, relevant and includes a clear and detailed timeline of the application processing, the dates of requested info, the date you provided such to the adviser, and the date the mge lender record having duly recd the requested info from the adviser for processing (ie - you are looking to clearly illustrate to the reader where the delays originate from and the timescales involved).

Ensure you also state what actions you require in resolution of the complaint i.e in this case for they to absorb the extra SDLT, incurred as a direct result of their failure to peform their duties within a timely and professional manner.

The more factual, detailed and robust you make it, the more likely they are to accept they are unable to argue the points, and will hopefully avoid having to refer to FOS dragging the matter out further.

Hope this helps

Holly

MoneyMagic01273

to be honest I think you would actually need to complete the purchase of your new property and have actually incurred the stamp duty costs first before you could start any claim.

Which will not help you if you are saying you simply cannot afford the stamp duty and could not complete if you had to pay it.

However rubbish and inefficient you believe your MA may be - any number of additional issues and delays could take place between now completion that could mean your 24th March deadline might have been missed anyway...who knows. And I should also ask; what exactly is delaying completion now? You have 2 weeks to do this which sounds feasible to me if everything else really was going smoothly.

In effect, until the scenario has fully played out, the cost has been incurred and the complete end to end sequence of all events can be evaluated you would not be able to start any claim, IMO.

And then, once this has played out and you have incurred the cost (assuming you decide to complete) there are no garuantees your claim would be successfull. Knowing little of the exact circumstances of your purchase, or having much to go on in terms of the actual issues you say you have had with your MA - on the face of it 2-3 months is not excessive when it comes to purchasing a property in many cases. Especially as your purchase went over the christmas period where understandably things may slow down for a considerable period.

Right across the house buying process you could probably argue that a number of other people could also have gone "a little quicker" than they did also.

Could you explain a little more about the nature of these issues/delays? How certain are you that you can actually PROVE (I mean actually prove - not accuse) that what you allege to have happened actually happened.

I'm not saying you don't have a valid complaint or claim - I'm just wary about you proceed on the basis that are successfull in a claim, if your finances and your ability to afford the stamp duty is really is that tight. You may not win and it may be hard for you to pin all these delays on your MA.

Billiamg

Thank you all for your responses. I am reluctant to go into to much detail at the moment. For all I know our advisor might read these forums. I would just like to know where we would stand if we do lose out. And how we should proceed from then.

We have had an offer for several weeks now and our solicitor is waiting for the draft contract from from the sellers solicitor. Though they want 14 days to do all the searches once received.

My other half has pushed the advisor constantly over the last 3 months to get things done. We were constantly reassured that it would not come to this and we would comfortably complete before the deadline.

We have an extensive number of email exchanges with our advisor which i would consider to be proof rather than accusation in a complaint and we have complained before now on the service we have so far received. If we do miss the deadline then we certainly will be making a formal complaint to to the advisors company.

holly_hobby

If you have had your mortgage offer - the adviser has done his job.

It seems to be the legals that are stalling, which is not the advisors fault, but the solicitor you have the issue with - if I have read your post correctly.

Holly

kingstreet

I've had applications submitted on a tuesday and offered on a thursday.

Similarly, I've had applications submitted on 16 June, not offered until 19 August.

I find this;-

We have had an offer for several weeks now and our solicitor is waiting for the draft contract from from the sellers solicitor.

quite concerning. The draft contract should have been forwarded to your solicitor within a week or two of your offer being accepted for the property.

TBH after the time that's elapsed, I'd have expected your solicitor to be in a position to exchange on the day the mortgage offer arrived. Not being in a position to even request searches because he hasn't yet got the draft contract from the other side is a concern after such a time.

Clearly, you need to tell us a lot more about how your mortgage application progressed.