Solicitor wants proof we can pay them the fees

class2ldn

lazer wrote: »

The risk was that somehow i would not be able to save £700 for solicitor fees between offer and completion, but considering it takes normally 6 weeks to complete, and i would have had 2 pay cheques in that time - it wasn't really a risk!

I also had a £2k unused overdraft on my bank account that could have been used to pay the solicitor fees after completion!

The OP is not actually short of money from what i can gather, it is just not moved into the house savings fund and she doesn't want to pay it out until she has too.

He actually lol

Manchee

Bit of a non-issue from what I can see. If you have cash but spread across different accounts all you do is give them a bank statement for each, really no need for drama.

I don't blame them for asking, sure you might not have wanted to start the searches but theres other stuff that goes on in the background as well, which they would have to pay an employee to do. Why waste time and money on clients who you suspect don't have the money to pay you and refuse to prove they do.

(Eta repeated double posting annoys some people, just as an aside...)

Giggs_11

I must have had a nice solicitor then! He advised me not to pay anything on account until the mortgage offer came through. As soon as it did, I paid them money for the searches.

slowpoke_rodriguez

class2ldn wrote: »

but like I say we've got our mortgage now and the money is in the bank.

Really...?

Fairy18

Yes really.....

Herbalus

I'm confused by the whole situation. You seemed to not be able to pay the solicitor because you thought you could spread the payments, so had the money elsewhere. Well, why not show them a statement from those accounts?

Having the money elsewhere is fine, as long as you have enough to buy the house and associated costs and can access it all. No problem.

Having nearly enough money and planning to use your next two months paychecks to top it up seems to be skating pretty close to the edge. I'm sure you'd agree.

If it's the former, I don't see the issue with showing the solicitor. If it's the latter, the solicitor is quite right to question your ability to pay.

So to answer your question, it's not normal for a solicitor to ask for proof of funds, unless your solicitor has reason to believe you don't. Then it probably is normal. But as you've paid already now, it's moot.

Herbalus

class2ldn wrote: »

Yes its ideal to have all the money but sometimes its not always possible.

With all respect, if somebody doesn't have the money accessible to pay for a house and associated costs, then logically they probably shouldn't be doing it. Otherwise the question is, how are you going to pay for it?

If you mean that you're relying on your next paycheck to top up the funds, then I sure hope you've estimated costs generously. The solicitor has probably had a few people skate too close to the edge and fall off, hence their questions.

And if your survey comes back and says there's an issue, what're you going to do? You may have the answers for all these contingencies, but as we don't know, you can't blame us for asking!

Manchee

Fairy18 wrote: »

Yes really.....

??? OP did you create a new user name and forget you weren't logged in to the old one when replying?

...bit of a strange first post otherwise...

Thrugelmir

Giggs_11 wrote: »

I must have had a nice solicitor then! He advised me not to pay anything on account until the mortgage offer came through. As soon as it did, I paid them money for the searches.

That's fine. As long as you accept that the process may be delayed by your action. Solicitors ask for the funds in order that the process can commence immediately they receive the mortgage offer. Not wait for the client to remit cleared funds.

class2ldn

Do you want proof aswell slowpoke?
No im not fairy lol.
Who had said we are relying on next months pay to come in?
I understand what you're saying about showing them the different accounts but the only reason they have questioned it is because it wasn't passed on that we were waiting for our mortgage offer.
I mean realistically who wants to !!!! about getting statements from different accounts to show them the proof?
As ive already said the valuation is done before the mortgage offer with halifax so we'd already paid out £665 for this.
Do you really think we'd pay that in tge first place of we didn't have the funds to cover the other stuff.
Admittedly we won't have much left over once it's gone out but only until the end of that month.
Otherwise we are doing just fine with the costs of it all.
Just didn't see the sense in paying out more money if it turned out to be fruitless.