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lewismum

Hi

I have recently had an offer accepted on a house.I have my mortgage offer and thought everything was going along fine until i had a letter from my solicitor saying the people who we are buying from are having problems with the title deeds still being in parents name although they are deceased now. Apparently there is a will confirming that the lady who i have bought it from owns it.They are basically asking me to bare with them while they get this sorted.I have never bought a house before so not sure about how things work.Any idea on timescale? The house needs alot of work done windows,heating re-wiring new kitchen and bathroom.Would it be cheeky to ask my solicitor to ask there solicitor if we could borrow keys for a few hours to be able to get some quotes?

Many thanks

Janette x

Hutch100uk

I don't see why not. At the end of the day, its their oversight causing the delay. They won't want to pee you off incase you pull out!!!

mrginge

Could take months to resolve. Start looking at other properties.

HappyMJ

lewismum wrote: »

Hi

I have recently had an offer accepted on a house.I have my mortgage offer and thought everything was going along fine until i had a letter from my solicitor saying the people who we are buying from are having problems with the title deeds still being in parents name although they are deceased now. Apparently there is a will confirming that the lady who i have bought it from owns it.They are basically asking me to bare with them while they get this sorted.I have never bought a house before so not sure about how things work.Any idea on timescale? The house needs alot of work done windows,heating re-wiring new kitchen and bathroom.Would it be cheeky to ask my solicitor to ask there solicitor if we could borrow keys for a few hours to be able to get some quotes?

Many thanks

Janette x

I don't see any reason why you can't borrow the keys either.

Cakeguts

This should have been sorted out when the person selling the house got probate for her parents estate. I assume that she did get probate? If not she can't sell the house because she doesn't own it. It isn't as simple as her just having a will. Who knows if that is the latest will. If the house is still in the name of her parents then it still belongs to the estate of her parents. The person who dealt with or who is dealing with the probate will have to sort this out. It could take a short time or it could take several months.

Do not do any work to the property now as you may never get to own it. Work out how long you are prepared to wait. It might be several months. It depends on what they legally have to do. If you want to buy a house fairly soon you may do well to keep looking for other properties in case buying this one goes on for a long time. It can take several months to do all the legal work and the surveys so you don't really want the added time for sorting out ownership of the property.

AnotherJoe

Is the house vacant ? And do you really mean you'd like access to get quotes,rather tha borrow the keys ? The two are quite different things. focus on what you want, which is access for builders to get quotes, which is reasonable, rather than getting a set of keys which may give rise to all sorts of issues.

The other issue is,this could take a very long time to resolve, if it does, do you think there is a danger the sellers might say "6 months have elapsed since we accepted an offer,house prices have risen, we want more" ?

I would start looking elsewhe as a precaution

Hutch100uk

My parents had a similar issue when selling my late Gran's house. They had probate but only for my gran's half of the house. So technically the only owned half (I think). It took ages to sort out, not helped by the fact the solicitor was useless. I would try to get legal advice independently to find out how long this should take before doing anything else.

lewismum

Thanks so much for all your replys.I Will be phoning my solicitor first thing tomorrow. I dont mind waiting as its my ideal house in the correct location but would be better if i could get access for quotes etc as there is a few big jobs needing done.

Will update when i know anything else

Janette x

Hoploz

But Janette there might not be any point getting quotes of this thing gets complicated and runs on and on. Really, I think it's best if you wait a while, just put everything on hold, as at the moment you can't be sure you will be able to buy the house.

lr1277

Janette

Please remember, mortgage offers expire. You said you were happy to wait, but you need to check when your mortgage will expire before deciding how long you will wait, or if you will wait and then get another mortgage.

HTH

robatwork

Sorry but from your explanation it sounds like the people you are "buying" the house from don't own the house.

This could take ages to sort out - longer than you'd be prepared to wait. I would suggest you tell them you are looking at other properties now, and do so. Let them know if they get probate organised in the next few weeks you will proceed with the offer.