Nightmare between exchange and completion of house sale

BitterAndTwisted

He can't "run away": after exchange of contracts he is fully committed to the purchase. The penalty for failing to complete means court

Lootos

Ill take all comments and advise on board andwill ask my solicitor for the next thing to do.

Crossing everything.

pinkteapot

Legally, you own the flat at the moment. It's yours and no matter how well you get on with the freeholder, right now it's your responsibility if work has started on the place without their permission. Your buyer has placed you in a shocking position.

BitterAndTwisted is right now though - your buyer is legally obliged to complete. If they don't, you solicitor will issue a notice to complete and then a legal process starts to pursue them. It's very, very rare for sales to fail to complete, so please try not to worry too much (hard I know in this situation!). Normally, if your buyer didn't complete (but they hadn't been in the property or touched it), you would threaten to sue them for the full completion monies and you'd end up settling, with them paying you some amount as compensation for the non-completion. In this case, if your buyer failed to complete, a judge would not look kindly on the damage they've done to your property so they'd side with you in terms of the compensation if it got that far!

On the positive side, if your buyer has already paid to have all this work done, I would expect them to complete.

Lootos

pinkteapot wrote: »

Legally, you own the flat at the moment. It's yours and no matter how well you get on with the freeholder, right now it's your responsibility if work has started on the place without their permission. Your buyer has placed you in a shocking position.

BitterAndTwisted is right now though - your buyer is legally obliged to complete. If they don't, you solicitor will issue a notice to complete and then a legal process starts to pursue them. It's very, very rare for sales to fail to complete, so please try not to worry too much (hard I know in this situation!). Normally, if your buyer didn't complete (but they hadn't been in the property or touched it), you would threaten to sue them for the full completion monies and you'd end up settling, with them paying you some amount as compensation for the non-completion. In this case, if your buyer failed to complete, a judge would not look kindly on the damage they've done to your property so they'd side with you in terms of the compensation if it got that far!

On the positive side, if your buyer has already paid to have all this work done, I would expect them to complete.

Thanks, I needed to hear alot of what youve said. Although, they say court route could take years to resolve. Here i hope to go down the completion route instead.

casperlarue

Just wondering why you have such a large time gap between exchange and completion? Is the buyer hoping to improve the value of the property before completion?

This is certainly a tricky situation to resolve, but no doubt it can ... I hope you have a ferocious solicitor!!

Ulfar

You say he has knocked through all the internal walls, has he knocked down any load bearing walls. This would be my first concern.

All major interior alterations should have been cleared with the freeholder, there is quite often clauses in the lease concerning this.

As for it being quite usual, I have only ever heard of this when buying a repossession and you need to get the property into a mortgageable state.

You say you agreed to exterior works, are these not the responsibility of the freeholder/management company. Even if they don't undertake the maintenance, exterior alterations will almost certainly require freeholder permission.

This is not forgetting building Regs. and planning permissions that may be required.

The buyer is certainly not entitled to lock you out of your own property.

agrinnall

casperlarue wrote: »

Just wondering why you have such a large time gap between exchange and completion? Is the buyer hoping to improve the value of the property before completion?

This is certainly a tricky situation to resolve, but no doubt it can ... I hope you have a ferocious solicitor!!

This is a key point. As you are not living in the property I would assume the gap is not at your request. Given what has happened I would be instructing my solicitor to push for bring completion forward to take place as soon as possible.

casperlarue

Perhaps the OP could confirm....is the buyer and the builder the same person? I'm just trying to work out why the big gap, possibly the buyer is lacking in funds and needs to improve the property to obtain further funding?

Another thought.... as you are still the legal owner could you cut off the services to the property? That would make it hard for building work to continue. I don't know if this is possible in a flat though?

Lootos

casperlarue wrote: »

Just wondering why you have such a large time gap between exchange and completion? Is the buyer hoping to improve the value of the property before completion?

This is certainly a tricky situation to resolve, but no doubt it can ... I hope you have a ferocious solicitor!!

Yes, i am sure thats why he asked for such a long exchanged to completion time. I was happy toecvhange and complete almost immediately.

Lootos

Ulfar wrote: »

You say he has knocked through all the internal walls, has he knocked down any load bearing walls. This would be my first concern.

All major interior alterations should have been cleared with the freeholder, there is quite often clauses in the lease concerning this.

As for it being quite usual, I have only ever heard of this when buying a repossession and you need to get the property into a mortgageable state.

You say you agreed to exterior works, are these not the responsibility of the freeholder/management company. Even if they don't undertake the maintenance, exterior alterations will almost certainly require freeholder permission.

This is not forgetting building Regs. and planning permissions that may be required.

The buyer is certainly not entitled to lock you out of your own property.

My solicitor did everything accordingly regards what he said he'd do with the ouside. Butthe inside works a suprise. Truely unexpected.