Help - Vendor suing us after delayed completion!

steampowered

TR1 wrote: »

£4000+ is excessive.

They should be asked to produce receipts/paperwork etc. to support their claim for £4,000.

You are required to "mitigate your loss", which means that you do need to investigate the matter. Not simply pay out whatever the vendor asks for.

They somehow got my mobile no. from the EA (evidently terrible) and so called me yesterday to inform of proceedings as advised by their solicitor.

I'm afraid it sounds like you have been lied to by the vendor here. It sounds like your vendor has not engaged a solicitor to look at this yet.

Once a solicitor has been instructed, the solicitor will deal with any necessary correspondence. I doubt the solicitor told the vendors to call you about it.

Furthermore, solicitors will put things in writing. The Civil Procedure Rules require that a formal 'letter before action' giving concise details of the claim is provided.

If you want to resolve this without the expense of solicitors, ask the vendor to provide receipts/documentation supporting their claim. You can then pass that up the chain.

Guest101

TR1 wrote: »

Inclined to agree that I'd do the same .Although due to the situation and I suppose 'being in the moment', we did allow our buyers to move in (but didn't because we weren't allowed).

Has anyone got any thoughts on our Vendors EA? If they hadn't given us the keys erroneously, this wouldn't have happened. Their mistake made a bad situation much worse - yet they seem to face no retribution?

No, really really no. You having keys is nothing to do with it.

TR1

I know that being given the keys in error doesn't affect the completion c**k up, but as we had them for 4+ hours, we effectively fully moved in to a house we didn't own. Then given 30 mins to leave and return keys to them.

Just seems unjust that a (another) mistake caused us huge inconvenience, but no recourse for the EA. Not even had an apology from them.

davidmcn

TR1 wrote: »

I know that being given the keys in error doesn't affect the completion c**k up, but as we had them for 4+ hours, we effectively fully moved in to a house we didn't own. Then given 30 mins to leave and return keys to them.

Like I said above, it would have been simpler if you had just refused to hand the keys back. It's not as if the EA or your vendors could have (immediately) done anything about it.

Gorecki

This isn't an awful situation that was not your fault, I completely empathise with you, horrible way to start your life in a new home.

It's hard but you need to detach yourself from the many ways you were wronged when dealing with the vendor.

As with most of the others, I think the vendor is behaving reasonably here (as long as all expenses do have invoices).
As far as house purchases go, the people beneath you are irrelevant to your vendor, they're selling to you.
Under contract you were supposed to ensure money was paid to them by a certain time for their house (through intermediaries/solicitors you choose and pay for), which didn't occur.

They're probably somewhere ranting that they had the whole weekend planned to move into their house, decorate, show friends round etc, but was all ruined because their buyer didn't come up with the money, not to mention their unpaid expenses.

As above, unfortunately the route forward is:
- Legal action through your solicitor (against the buyers), following your solicitors advice (or an alternate if they're truly useless).
- A complaint against the vendor's estate agent re. The key issue if you want to.

Again though, genuinely empathise with you, a horrible situation none of which is your doing :-(

saajan_12

TR1 wrote: »

I know that being given the keys in error doesn't affect the completion c**k up, but as we had them for 4+ hours, we effectively fully moved in to a house we didn't own. Then given 30 mins to leave and return keys to them.

Just seems unjust that a (another) mistake caused us huge inconvenience, but no recourse for the EA. Not even had an apology from them.

Having the keys is irrelevant, you should have known you hadn't completed (by sending the money) so shouldn't have moved in.

Besides, it probably made little difference, this way you had to stay in a hotel. The other way you'd have had to unload everything you'd put in the van in the morning, live around boxes for a weekend and re book removals for another day.. the costs and inconvenience would have been similar.

Guest101

TR1 wrote: »

I know that being given the keys in error doesn't affect the completion c**k up, but as we had them for 4+ hours, we effectively fully moved in to a house we didn't own. Then given 30 mins to leave and return keys to them.

Just seems unjust that a (another) mistake caused us huge inconvenience, but no recourse for the EA. Not even had an apology from them.

But you didn't have to leave. You must appreciate that at this point it was a civil matter. You could've stayed.


And you wont get one, they have nothing to apologise for. Especially as you aren't their client. You need an apology from YOUR BUYER (on behalf of their solicitor).

TR1

davidmcn wrote: »

Like I said above, it would have been simpler if you had just refused to hand the keys back. It's not as if the EA or your vendors could have (immediately) done anything about it.

It would have definitely been easier to stay, but we didn't think this was an option at the time.

Our Vendors and their EA were calling and threatening to have us removed by the Police if we didn't return the key to the EA before 18:00 (bearing in mind we found out about this at 17:30) - so staying didn't seem like a viable option to us and we were worried about what the consequences may have been.

TR1

Guest101 wrote: »

But you didn't have to leave. You must appreciate that at this point it was a civil matter. You could've stayed.

We know this now but didn't at the time. We were being threatened by our vendors and their EA with police action if keys weren't returned before 18:00

Guest101 wrote: »

And you wont get one, they have nothing to apologise for

saajan_12 wrote: »

Having the keys is irrelevant, you should have known you hadn't completed (by sending the money) so shouldn't have moved in

I think they do and should at least apologise to us. They made a huge error in telling us that we had completed and giving us keys to a property we didn't own.

I do understand that we should have waited for a call from our Solicitor (re completing) and of course will make sure of that in the future, but being relatively naive and understandably excited/overwhelmed at the prospect of moving in to our new house, I don't think many people would have second-guessed the information given to us considering it was from the EA who should know better.

steampowered

I don't think anyone can blame you. As the money hadn't been transferred I completely understand why you handed back the keys - it was probably the honourable thing to do.

Now you need to inform your buyers of your vendor's costs, and your own costs.