Solicitors fees when sale and purchase has fall through

Padilla

G_M wrote: »

The answer is to read the solicitor's Terms of Business, and your contract with them.

Assuming you had a fixed fee quote for both transactions, then normally you'd be charged on their hourly rates for the work they'd completed up to the point of collapse of the deals, capped at the quote level.

Some solicitors will offer an 'no Completion no fee' basis, but rarely as standard - you'd need to negotiate /agree this up front. And you'd probobly still have to pay for disbursements (searches etc) that they'd paid out for on your behalf.

I believe there is some kind of insurance available, but with all sorts of exceptions as to the circumstances leading to the failure of the deal - who pulls out and why.

Sounds like that's my lot then. These fees were on top of disbursements which I know had been transacted.

Padilla

emmatthews wrote: »

Were your sale and purchase not linked transactions? If your sale was at the point of exchange then I don't understand why conveyancing on your purchase had only just begun?

Hoploz wrote: »

I don't see how you can be up to exchange on the sale but hardly started on the purchase. If the two transactions were not linked then why did the seller pull out?


We were only exchanging on the sale. Completion dates for sale and purchase were not linked. The vendor of the house we wanted to purchase pulled out because they didn't want to wait for us to find another buyer.

TBagpuss

Foxed fees don't represent the actual time the conveyancer will put in on a file.

In my experience, most solicitors will, on an abortive transaction charge for their time at an hourly rate, capped at the fixed fee. It sounds as though that is what your solicitor is doing.

I haven't heard of non-compeltion insurance but your solicitor is there to deal with the legal side of the trnasaction, ot to act as an insurance salesperson. I would not expect any covneyancer or solicitor to have riased this with you.

AFF8879

If you were ready to exchange then solicitor would have likely carried out all of their searches. The solicitor usually purchases these from online databases at a cost which is passed on to you, so this is likely where the bulk of the cost is coming from.

If you knew that your solicitor was not working on a no completion / no fee basis then I don't see what the issue is?

That said I feel your pain- when I bought my flat earlier this year, the seller pulled out at the last minute- I had a great solicitor but unfortunately I didn't realise no completion / no fee existed :-(

I still used them for the next flat (which did thankfully go through) because IMO a good solicitor is vital to the whole process and I had such a good experience with mine I felt it unfair to penalise them (they did give me a discount however which was nice of them)

Padilla

AFF8879 wrote: »

If you were ready to exchange then solicitor would have likely carried out all of their searches. The solicitor usually purchases these from online databases at a cost which is passed on to you, so this is likely where the bulk of the cost is coming from.

If you knew that your solicitor was not working on a no completion / no fee basis then I don't see what the issue is?

That said I feel your pain- when I bought my flat earlier this year, the seller pulled out at the last minute- I had a great solicitor but unfortunately I didn't realise no completion / no fee existed :-(

I still used them for the next flat (which did thankfully go through) because IMO a good solicitor is vital to the whole process and I had such a good experience with mine I felt it unfair to penalise them (they did give me a discount however which was nice of them)

Thanks for your reply. Its all now with the benefit of experience isn't it. I agree that a good solicitor is vital to the whole process. The only quibble I had was in relation to the fees for the purchase (not sale which I know was almost there so fees would be almost the full amount). The purchase wasn't near exchange and wasn't linked to the completion date of the sale - I am being charged almost the full amount - the same amount actually as for the sale which was almost complete. So just didn't seem comparable.