What happens if completion fails mid-chain?

djm1972

Just curious, although i'm not really in that much of a chain. I'm piggy-in-the-middle of chain of three - selling to a first time buyer, and the place I am buying is vacant possession.

Come completion day; because I need my sale to fund my purchase, that obviously has to complete first. But then, what happens if something goes wrong during completion of my purchase? :cool:

Tiger_greeneyes

Completion won't fail mid-chain for the simple reason that all the solicitors confirm with each other over the 'phone that they're ready to complete. If one isn't, then they will start the telephone process again until they're all ready to complete. The completion process won't begin until they've all confirmed they're ready. The process starts with the bottom of the chain and ripples all the way to the top. Once the process has completed, you'll get a call from either your solicitor or EA to say keys have been released.

silvercar

if you have already exchanged the chances of completion failing are very small. Everyone has already signed and so the mortgages are in place and everyone has the intention of completing.

Occasionally completion can fail - say a mortgage offer is withdrawn or someone dies or goes bankrupt between exchange and completion. In these cases the buyer failing to complete would be liable to compensate the the seller for failing to complete. The sellers solicitor would give notice to the buyers solicitor to complete and if that didn't happen for a few days would go to court; the buyer would stand to lose their 10% deposit.

If you haven't exchanged contracts, anyone can walk away and owe nothing.

paddy's_mum

Sorry to have to tell you that completion failures do happen and I know this to my cost because it happened to me. I was at the top of a chain of three. At midday on the day of completion, when my purchasers, who had five young children, were already outside with a large lorry, two transits and the family cars, my conveyancers called to say that the guy at the bottom had 'forgotten' to get the monies to his solicitor. Nobody could contact him.

My purchasers were in floods of tears (well, what do you do with five grizzling, hungry kids?) and I was distraught although the position was not so serious for me as I was moving into rented many miles away as part of my voluntary relocation.

In the end, after a couple of hours of frantic negotiation between all the solicitors and conveyancers, my purchasers signed a 'licence' allowing them to occupy my house (for a large sum of money = rent) while the mess was sorted out. Unfortunately, because of their contract giving vacant possession to their own purchaser in turn, it would have been extremely difficult for them to return to their own house and they were advised that it would just make the whole nightmare even more complicated.

The guy at the bottom finally got his money in place five working days later and was totally blase about it all and couldn't work out what all the fuss was about. He was especially offhand with the "£$%^&* his own solicitor gave him.

We could each have pursued him legally for a few hundred pounds of compensation/penalties but it would not have been cost effective as it all eventually got sorted out.

My conveyancer at the time (Countrywide) had done many thousands in her 11 year career and had met this only twice before - once when someone died, and once when someone had been sectioned, between exchange and completion.

She had never met it because someone couldn't be bothered to get their backside in gear! (Sorry, don't mean to sound like a doom merchant.)

Tiger_greeneyes

I thought the OP was asking if the process could fail part way through - once the completion process starts then nothing can go wrong

Paddy's mum, your chain couldn't complete, so the process wasn't actually started. I can well imagine the forgetful buyer had a few fees to pay! Anything can happen between exchange and completion, however, that's a different matter altogether.