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Buyer fails to complete on our house purchase
Musketeer55
Posts: 6 Forumite
Our neighbour bugged us for 2 years to buy our house as he sold it to us 6 years ago and always regretted it. We eventually gave in and exchanged within 2 days of striking a deal as he didn't need a mortgage. He set a date for completion for 6 months later to give us time to find another house. The date for completion was Thursday 5th February 2015 (last Thursday). The removals company started packing up the house on Tuesday, loaded most of our stuff in a van on Wednesday leaving us with beds and essentials and a second van arrived on Thursday morning to load up the rest. The van doors were closed and we cleaned the house, left the new owners a nice card and bottle of champagne, said our goodbyes to the house, locked the door and got in the car to drive into our solicitors to drop off the keys.
On the way our solicitor called to say our buyer was not going to complete as he now needed a mortgage(!) and he was trying to sort it out and that we should get a hotel room for the night and hopefully it would all be resolved on Friday. My five year old son went to school in tears on the Friday and it broke my heart. We didn't have any clothes, pyjamas, toiletries etc as we thought we were only driving 4 miles down the road. My husband didn't even have any shoes, only wellies.
On the Friday it became apparent that we were not going to complete then either and so I took the decision to move into a holiday lodge in the area as it was self catering, cheaper than a hotel as we were footing the bill, and wholly more suitable for family life with a child and a dog. We have tried to relax over the weekend but our son has been very upset, confused and unsettled. He has been sick twice and wet the bed. We have no spare clothes and no washing machine.
I have been trying to unpick all the preparations I made for the new house. Mail redirection, white goods delivery, Sky broadband etc.
We run our own business and only have an iPad for use - no computer, files or book-keeping system.
My question is this. Should the buyers solicitor not have done some sort of due diligence to check the buyer had the funds and asked for them to be drawn down the day before? Why was it left until we moved out before we were informed there was a problem. Is my solicitor at fault here too? Whist we can claim back reasonable expenses can we claim for the stress and misery to our family and the damage to our business?
Our solicitor has served notice to complete, as have we been served notice by our seller. If we don't complete tomorrow our solicitor has to send back our mortgage monies as they will have been in their account more than 3 days which is not allowed and then we have to re-apply which takes time.
It is going to kill me if he doesn't come up with the money and we have to move back next door to him!
Can anyone offer any advice?
On the way our solicitor called to say our buyer was not going to complete as he now needed a mortgage(!) and he was trying to sort it out and that we should get a hotel room for the night and hopefully it would all be resolved on Friday. My five year old son went to school in tears on the Friday and it broke my heart. We didn't have any clothes, pyjamas, toiletries etc as we thought we were only driving 4 miles down the road. My husband didn't even have any shoes, only wellies.
On the Friday it became apparent that we were not going to complete then either and so I took the decision to move into a holiday lodge in the area as it was self catering, cheaper than a hotel as we were footing the bill, and wholly more suitable for family life with a child and a dog. We have tried to relax over the weekend but our son has been very upset, confused and unsettled. He has been sick twice and wet the bed. We have no spare clothes and no washing machine.
I have been trying to unpick all the preparations I made for the new house. Mail redirection, white goods delivery, Sky broadband etc.
We run our own business and only have an iPad for use - no computer, files or book-keeping system.
My question is this. Should the buyers solicitor not have done some sort of due diligence to check the buyer had the funds and asked for them to be drawn down the day before? Why was it left until we moved out before we were informed there was a problem. Is my solicitor at fault here too? Whist we can claim back reasonable expenses can we claim for the stress and misery to our family and the damage to our business?
Our solicitor has served notice to complete, as have we been served notice by our seller. If we don't complete tomorrow our solicitor has to send back our mortgage monies as they will have been in their account more than 3 days which is not allowed and then we have to re-apply which takes time.
It is going to kill me if he doesn't come up with the money and we have to move back next door to him!
Can anyone offer any advice?
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Comments
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Signing into thread, reaching for popcorn and sitting back0
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What about the poor people your buying off ? Might cost you big time . subscribed too for future post:cool: hard as nails on the internet . wimp in the real world :cool:0
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Er - the "poor people" we are buying off have already bought another house independently and have moved out before completion. Our old house and our new house are sitting empty whilst we are without our contents and don't know which house we are moving into. Our sellers stand to keep the deposit if completion never happens - a cool £160,000! I don't think they are worried!0
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I a little confised here. Maybe I'm missing something.
As your house hasn't been sold then why couldn't you have jsut moved straight back into it.
I understand that would be a 3 figure sum to the removal firm, but you'd be back in your home with relatively small (amd more importantly finite) losses.0 -
How awful! I hope you get some good news on Monday0
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Would your solicitor not have had an inkling that completion was not going to happen prior to the actual day itself? Surely checks would have been made to ascertain that your buyer's funds were in place to complete?
Hope it gets resolved soon!Mortgage-free for fourteen years!
Over £40,000 mis-sold PPI reclaimed0 -
I a little confised here. Maybe I'm missing something.
As your house hasn't been sold then why couldn't you have jsut moved straight back into it.
I understand that would be a 3 figure sum to the removal firm, but you'd be back in your home with relatively small (amd more importantly finite) losses.
That seemed obvious to me too but my solicitor advised me not to. We put the removals on standby for Friday and Saturday and have had to pay £2,500 cancellation charges (100%) and will need to pay another £2,500 to get our things moved back. Apparently the buyer is liable for these costs but we will have to go to litigation to claim.0 -
Musketeer55 wrote: »Apparently the buyer is liable for these costs but we will have to go to litigation to claim.
Well, first you would claim from him directly then you would consider going to court if he didn't pay.0 -
phoebe1989seb wrote: »Would your solicitor not have had an inkling that completion was not going to happen prior to the actual day itself? Surely checks would have been made to ascertain that your buyer's funds were in place to complete?
Hope it gets resolved soon!
That's what I intend to find out. Obviously huge amounts of removals costs and accommodation costs could have been minimised if we were advised in advance that completion was to be delayed and we could have stayed put. I just don't understand why the buyers solicitors did not ask for the funds to be deposited into their client account the day before - is that negligent?0 -
Musketeer55 wrote: »I just don't understand why the buyers solicitors did not ask for the funds to be deposited into their client account the day before - is that negligent?
They probably asked for funds to be deposited in advance, but often settlement funds don't arrive until the last minute. You might get told in advance if they know there will definitely be a problem (e.g. a buyer loses their job), but otherwise there is often no advance notice that there will be a breach of contract.0
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