Halifax caused my mortgage to fall through but solicitor still wants fees

doomc23

Hi,

my wife and i applied for a mortgage and everything was going well until at the last minute it fell through due to poor credit rating. When we first went to get the mortgage our rating was very good and and by the end it was poor. When we signed up to Experian(an extortionate company who charges you to find out YOUR OWN details at £15 per month) we realised that when the bank was trying to find out the best mortgage possible for us, they were also doing credit checks everytime(10 in total in the space of a few weeks) which caused the crash in our rating. When we brought this up to halifax they said there was nothing they could.
A few weeks later, to add insult to injury, i receive a letter from our solicitor demanding a fee £400 to be paid for work carried out which from what im reading on their bill is 4 phone calls and an email(These people should wear balaclavas)
I phoned and said that i would be refusing to pay the fee and they have now threatened me with small claims court. Do i have a leg to stand on? There is no real breakdown in the work they carried out, only a few big words and a lot of repetitive lines.

Hope someone can help me with my query. Many thanks

snowscreamer

Does this solicitor have anything to do with the mortgage company?

If this is a separate solicitor you have engaged and has done work for you then I don't see any issue with them charging for their work? If the solicitor is unrelated to the mortgage company then your mortgage issue is not relevant.

amnblog

What did the solicitors terms say.

I very much doubt they would be pressing you for payment unless you had agreed to their charges.

aylesburygirl

Have Halifax done the 10 credit checks?? or a broker.

Most solicitors work on no sale no fee (well round here they do) was the fee for their time or for searches (these can be circa £300)

If they aren't no sale no fee you would have signed terms at the beginning confirming you are happy with their charges? Might be worth digging out the solicitor pack

TBagpuss

You need to check the terms and conditions your solicitor sent you when you fisrt instructed them. However, unless they agreed to a no-completion/ no-fees deal then you will have to pay them for their work regardless of whether the sale completed. Even if there was a no completion agreement then you will have to pay for any disbursements which have been paid out, such as search fees.

If you are not clear what they are charging for, then of course you can ask them to provide a little more detail.

it is not your solicitor's fault that you didn't get the mortgage so why would you expect not to have to pay for the work they did for you?

egoode

doomc23 wrote: »

Hi,

When we signed up to Experian(an extortionate company who charges you to find out YOUR OWN details at £15 per month)

Firstly you don't need to pay the £15/month. You can order a statutory copy of your report for £2 which will show you all the same details except for a credit score number but you don't need a credit score number as it is not something the banks look at and is entirely meaningless.

As for your solicitors costs check what the agreement was with them. If they had actually started work on the file, particularly if they had paid for the searches already then you probably have no option but to pay the money.

As for Halifax doing so many searches you could raise a complaint with them, but are you sure that's the exact reason you were declined for a mortgage? Are there any late payments on your file? Were you going for a mortgage with a low deposit? As they will be tougher on those type of mortgages.

doomc23

i phoned them asking for a complete breakdown of the charges and when i did she started getting very ignorant and eventually hung the phone up on me. the outgoing fees on the for them amounted to £32 and then they asked for £360 on top for work carried out from which i can see is a few phone calls and emails. Surely this cant be right? They are asking for a total of £392 which seems pretty high to me. I will check the agreement terms when im home later. If i go to court with this can i do anything about it?

doomc23

we were putting 15% of the mortgage down and it was all approved and going through. There was no late payments on our credit score and the only flaws we could see was that there was so many credit checks carried out on our file

YorkshireBoy

doomc23 wrote: »

it was all approved and going through.

So what reason did Halifax give for withdrawing their offer? You have asked them?

there was so many credit checks carried out on our file

All full credit searches? Or were some ID/Quotation/other searches of the unrecorded type? And who made them?...all by Halifax?


If both types, how many of each?

doomc23

Everyone was done by halifax, when we got in touch with experian they confirmed this and carried out and investigation. Once it was made clear that it was Halifax they wiped it completely off the their credit report and we went back up to very good and now in excellent.
(paid off our cc)

Mortgage_Mark_2

Banks don't just do credit checks on a scatter gun approach; have you used a broker or online service or something that has caused the searches?

Something doesn't add up here...

EDIT: If your rating is now back up to excellent and the searches are no longer showing, why can Halifax not lend? Either way, Halifax DIP searches are soft searches - it's very unlikely that THEY would penalise you for a few of THEIR searches, is there nothing at all in the background? Have you had any missed payments etc at all in the last 6 years?