Solicitor holding £80k of my money for months....

Johnt1986

Hi all
Our solicitor has been holding our £80,000 deposit since the house we were about to purchase in March fell through. We didnt bother to take the money back as a few days later we had an offer accepted on another property. After much time wasting this property also fell through! Again we found another property quickly and started the process of purchasing it which is where we are today about to sign contracts. The solicitor is charging us £950 for their services which includes monies owed from the first property which we were literally 3 days from moving into when the chain collapsed!

What i would like to know is how much interest, if any, would the solictors made from my money in the past 3 months? Ive heard they have very high interest 'holding' accounts but im just curious?

cheers

John

G_M

The money will be held in aspecial 'client account' to keep it safe, and seperate from the solicitor's own money.

Interest will be around 0.01% at a guess.

If you want it back, write and ask for it. They will probobly deduct what you owe them to date.

TDPIX

I thought that solicitor's client accounts have poor rates of interest?

Either way, if it's over a particular amount (£24 comes to mind?), they do have to pay you the interest - so perhaps ask them how much interest was generated from your deposit?

ACG

I might be wrong but i think solicitors holding accounts generally pay no interest - that way they do not have to deal with paying out interest etc (1 less thing to worry about).

http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/handbook/accountsrules/part5/rule22/content.page

Johnt1986

cheers for the replies

I dont want the interest back but if they had made something i would have haggled on their fees!

ACG

when i had my deposit in a savings account (which is a staff isa account) - over the year i received £8.60 my savings were £20k for 12 months.

Youve got 4 times as much but its only been in there a quarter of the time so presuming they have it in a decent savings account youve lost out on about £10. I dont think it will be in a high interest account so i would say you have lost out on a few pence.