Conveyancing, useless solicitors, and unhelpfull sellers

johnboy1995

This year should have been a good one, after more than 30 years of paying mortgages I was in the great position of making the final payment, a good feeling indeed. Or maybe not.....
In early February I went onto the Land Registry site to look for the title deeds (it’s not like it used to be, you can get copies at any time, at a small cost). Also unknown to me before this was that my property had two title deeds (hands up those who realised this could happen, I didn’t). One of them was for part of the garden, but hey, should be okay shouldn’t it, I’d had the usual sluggish service from a solicitors office that has always seemed to be a part of buying property. What did I find; that the one covering part of the garden had not been transferred. A slightly stunned feeling happened at this point. The same day I phoned my solicitors who said someone would phone me back... after a couple of hours with no call, I emailed both title copies to my solicitors and said that this was clearly wrong. Four day later (admittedly weekend in between) I got a call on my way home from work. They would need another couple of days to find the file!, they had only received one title from the sellers solicitors and were did I think the cost should lie (what!). There was some implication at this point that the actual sellers must have known that there were two titles, as I said why would they, I’ve don’t think I’ve seen a title in my life, I suspect like most people they don’t expect to see one until it’s paid off. From stunned to actually quite annoyed in 30 minutes, I wrote exactly what I thought about all this to them, wasn’t the whole point of using a solicitor to avoid things like his happening in the first place, and costs (was pretty disgusted at that one actually), surely everyone would actually want to just put this right as soon as possible?
They said they would write to the sellers solicitors, days passed, weeks passed, in mid March I phoned them to find out what was going on, I finally got through to the person who actually dealt with it at time, she seemed a bit unsure about what to say and said she needed to ask someone whether she could talk to me or my solicitor. Anyway, by April I found that they had actually replied to my solicitor on the day I phoned, note not before (wow, I teach small children and couldn’t help feeling that I was in the middle of a class at this point). At this point I told them I had reported them to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (for some reason the SRA seem to have the same secrecy level as MI5 so I have no idea if anything actually happened with that), I also said exactly what I thought about them, the words negligent, slow and obstructive were all in there, so you get the idea. Should you write letters like that to a solicitor, who knows, it was all true, no reply naturally.
I then found an old number for the sellers, they didn’t want to give me a forwarding address at the time, so I used to text them when they had post so someone could pick it up, sometimes I would see him in the morning delivering milk and give him the post. Light bulb moment, perhaps I could avoid going through useless solicitors and deal directly with the sellers to get this sorted out. Spoke to the Land Registry a number of times, could I do this without a solicitor? On a positive note in this, everyone I spoke to at the Land Registry have been both helpful and human! They have actually kept me sane at some points through this (while they don’t give advice, ask the right questions). Left a message on the answerphone (says mailbox of [Removed by Forum Team]) so was feeling hopeful at this point, no answer, sent text explaining what happened, no answer. When talking to neighbours found out that they had moved again since them but delivered to a shop in the village. Light bulb 2, maybe an old number I was contacting so leave a letter for him at the newsagents. Yes, they confirmed he did and passed on the letter, no reply. Confirmed the phone number ....... positive attitude severely dented at this point. Surely ..... Perhaps if you know him you could ask him why he wouldn’t just make this easy and just sign the dam forms.
Anyway, some action by my solicitor due to reporting the matter to the Ombudsman .. ongoing

grumbler

Lazy and unprofessional solicitors do deserve naming and shaming, but not the seller who has done nothing wrong. Solicitor !!!!ed up and it's now their job to sort everything out.
I suggest you edit the post and remove the name and the phone.
Then post on the correct board: House Buying, Renting & Selling

johnboy1995

Four months ago I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you, but I currently have a property no sane person would even contemplate buying. I completely agree that they were innocent parties to this originally, but they are quite prepared it seems to leave me in the **** when they could very easily have helped to sort this out. This is now over 4 months on, with my health suffering, time off work for which I do not get paid, so yes I do take your point, but people telling me things should get sorted out etc, do make me glaze over somewhat.