Un-mortgagable property - solicitor should have known?

Too_Hairy_Husky

I'm not sure if this should be in this section or House Buying, so I apologise if I've got it wrong.

To summarise our situation:

August 2012 - We found a house with land that we wanted to buy, agreed a price with the seller and put our house on the market. Our house sold (well, received an offer) within 24 hours and off we went.

September 2012 - We discovered that our mortgage company wouldn't work with our local solicitor.

October 2012 - At the suggestion of L&C we instructed Premier Property Lawyers to act for us.

Now it gets complicated...

According to their E-Way forms, our searches were requested on 2 November 2012 and received on 22 November. Despite asking on several occassions they were not reported back to us until 31 January 2013 - and we had Exchanged, Completed and moved out of our old home by 26 January.

The Contract Documents were requested on 24 October 2012 and received on 2 November 2012. Again, despite asking, these were not reported to us until 19 February 2013... and it was at that point the Conveyancer "discovered" that there was a Covenant on the property that made it essentially unmortgagable.

3 1/2 months on we have no home, we're £10,000 out of pocket and have just had to sign up to rent for a year whilst we try to save that £10,000 back up to make up a decent deposit again.

My question is, were we naive in moving out of our old home? At no point were we ever advised that it might go wrong - we were second-time buyers, so had never sold a house before. We only used PPL to purchase, not to sell our old home. Never was there a mention that something like this crop up.

The thing is, we knew about the Covenant and we specifically asked PPL to look at it in early January. They came back and said that "you just need to sign what the previous people signed". Then on 19 February, they claimed to have never received the Covenant document... BUT they had uploaded it to E-Way system and we downloaded it that night!

I'm really, really not the kind of person to go around suing people - but do you think we stand any chance of making a claim for negligence? £10,000 is a lot of money to loose and, to be honest, I am desperate.

I have printed out all emails and screen grabs of the E-Way forms that I have. Unfortunately the Covenant was only mentioned on the telephone, but they do say calls are recorded.

I'd love any thoughts or advice.

Thank you, Homeless-Sarah

bebewoo

Why are you £10k out of pocket?
Seems a lot for surveys and searches on new place, and removal fees, solicitors fees on the sale.

Too_Hairy_Husky

£1,500 storage fees
£750 on a different solicitor to try and sort the mess
£300 postal redirection plus £300 to have it redirected for a second time
£500 a week on temporary accommodation (£1,000 per month more than our usual outgoings) based on solicitor's "You'll be in within a fortnight" predictions every week...
£250 x 2 credit searches for new rental property

It adds up.

Thrugelmir

Were you naive? In essence yes. Many problems can be encountered with house purchase and sale.

Too_Hairy_Husky

Thank you for your honesty. Should we have been advised of this? I don't want to whinge and whine, but we had no previous experience of any of this...

Thrugelmir

Too_Hairy_Husky wrote: »

Thank you for your honesty. Should we have been advised of this? I don't want to whinge and whine, but we had no previous experience of any of this...

Difficult to comment without knowing all the details. What was the issue with the covenent?

Why have you lost £10k?

Why did you procced with the sale of your existing property?

Too_Hairy_Husky

The Covenant turned out to be an Overage (Uplift / Clawback being the other terms I have heard) and a search on here says that no high street bank will lend on a property with that kind of Covenant - the The Woolwich certainly wouldn't and L&C couldn't find one that would.

19 weeks flitting from hotel to B&B to holiday cottage alone added up to £7,250 plus storage costs, solicitors fees etc. I wont even go in to lost earnings as Husband runs a business from "home".

I know we must sound naive - honestly I do - but the move was for his health. To try and reduce stress - which looking back is now simply laughable

holly_hobby

Ok,

You did not use PPL in respect to your sale - of which you completed without having exchanged on your own purchase, which was a tad premature given you were in a chain and were aware of a covernant - and IMHO something that PPL are ultimately not responsible for (unless they advised you to complete on your sale whilst your own pch was somewhat up in the air ?).

Your complaint appears to be in respect of the timeline and conduct of PPL re your purchase.

Have you contacted them with your issues ?

If so what has been their response ?

I am presuming that if the title issues were reported back to you in November, you would have withdrawn from the pch and your own sale ? Or would you have continued with your own sale regardless (perhaps going into rented or sourcing an alternative property to pch) ?

Holly

Somerset

So what you are essentially asking ( for the legal eagle's ) is - in a standard conveyance, does the conveyancer have a legal responsibility to promptly report a major issue, given that :

''Our searches were requested on 2 November 2012 and received ( by PPL ) on 22 November''
''The Contract Documents were requested on 24 October 2012 and received ( by PPL ) on 2 November 2012''

The issue was reported to us ( by PPL ) on 19 February 2013.

I'd be spitting mad they'd sat on their hands that long, but it may be legal ie not negligent - I've honestly no idea.

Too_Hairy_Husky

Holly Hobby and Somerset - thank you! Yes - that is what I am getting at.

I am mid-letter now, which is what prompted me to post the question. I have the address of their customer service dept and am just going through and trying to list everything that went wrong.

If we had known back in November that we could not buy it we would most definately have pulled out of the sale of our house - and we' still be there now.

holly_hobby

Ok, well that is the tack you take ....

Your complaint should centre around their proven lack of case management and lack of due diligence and demonstrated professional attention in this matter, ask for a detailed timeline with supporting copy documentation.

Although, if I were responding on their behalf in respect to your claim for costs, my response would be that you should not have proceeded and completed your own sale, without having at least your own pch up and running (ie mge and formal offer in place, with either exchange having taken place, or no known obstruction to this.

So when constructing your complaint consider this, and how you could respond to this defence should they present it ... forearmed and all that !

I am here to help you, but also trying to play devils advocate for a balanced discussion and to illustrate how they may defend your claim for costs.

Hope this helps

Holly x