Anyone had any experience with the Homes and Communities Agency?

mojobanana

Hi,
I lurk often but think this is either a first post or first in a while!

Basically, 6 and a half years ago I bought my first home using an equity loan scheme - my choice homebuy - through Catalyst Housing.

I'm now selling the house and buying another (and relocating 180 miles), but my solicitor advises that as well as the interests of Catalyst being on the house, there's also one from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

I was completely unaware of this and so far my solicitor is saying that he can't get any information from them as to the nature of having the thing removed for the purposes of sale. (Can't remember the terminology.)

I've phoned them (and got an incredibly unhelpful 'customer service' person basically shouting at me) and subsequently emailed them and my enquiry has been forwarded to their legal dept. I should have a reply within 5 days, but I was originally meant to be completing on everything next Tuesday.

Combined with outstanding paperwork from my local council and the vendor of the house I'm buying changing her mind about completion and I am one very stressed banana!

I'm boring myself about the whole house-selling/buying debacle now, as it's been going on and on for nearly 3 months. The stress is the not knowing, right?

Has anyone else dealt with HCA? I read on their website that they control the affordable housing scheme organisations, but can't understand why they are listed as well as Catalyst.

Argh!
Jo

martinsurrey

Did you part buy part rent using home buy?

So bought say 50% of the house, with your 50% financed through homebuy?

££sc££

I think I'd be a bit cross with my solicitor rather than the HCA. Is it a restriction on title? If so, you say the sale has been going on nearly three months yet have only recently made contact with them. You are going to need consent from their legal team by the sound of it and to be honest these things do take a while, and leaving it until the last few weeks before completion has made things difficult for you. Why did your solicitor not raise this months ago!? I don't think it's unreasonable for the HCA to take 5 working days to come back to you. That also might be their service standard to make contact and acknowledge you/the issue - rather than giving the consent

mojobanana

Hi folks, thanks for your replies.

My purchase was a 100% purchase from the developer (I happened to buy a newbuild), but a portion of the purchase was funded by an equity loan from Catalyst through the my choice homebuy scheme. I've been paying a fee on the loan for the past 6.5 years. When I sell, the proportion (around 29%) of the sale price will be returned to Catalyst.

I am incredibly cross with the solicitor. There seems to be a lack of timeliness on a few issues, including even communicating with the other parties in the chain. This has been going on for 11 weeks now and it feels like they're not making progress on this, a fairly fundamental aspect. I'm about to call and moan at them and find out what they've done in the last 24 hours to move this along. I'm realising that it's probably only me phoning them every day that's going to make stuff happen.

The 5 day thing was in an acknowledgment email from HCA, and they responded quicker than that but just to say that the enquiry had been forwarded to their legal department. I've no idea how long it will take for their legal department to reply.

I'm just completely bewildered by the HCA thing...it's a restriction on title. I understand why Catalyst would have one, but not HCA.

It's all incredibly frustrating. It's easy to underestimate just how stressful this whole process is. I just want to move home!

ethank

this is the solicitors fault. One of the first things they should do, is a Land Registry check and they would have known that there was charges in respect of the Equity.

mojobanana

Well as fun as it is blaming the solicitor, we are where we are. My focus was really what the involvement of the HCA might be and how quickly they'd get this sorted.

It looks like solicitor chap is making headway with the HCA, having got a contact and some way forward. The outstanding docs from the council are also becoming available so hopefully by tomorrow I'll have some good news, with hopefully an exchange (and completion) date looming.

Is it possible for me to find out when a land registry search was made? I might make some sort of fuss once this whole debacle is over...