Conveyancing

Barrym777 · 6 March 2019 at 8:10PM

I am currently in a dispute with my Solicitors who I used to purchase my house almost 3 years ago.

When I came to remortgage June 18 I thought the solicitors acting on my behalf were just useless (previous experience led me to believe they all were). After lots of digging by myself and conversations with them though it was discovered the issue was because my solicitor on purchasing the house registered the wrong percentage amount owned on the lease with the Land Registry. (I purchased 50%).

This has caused a huge delay, making sure I was paying the correct amount of rent on the unowned share, purchase price was correct etc. The difference between new mortgage payments and current variable rate payments are around £100 a month more (leaving me out of pocket).

I was very unimpressed with the actual service I received and before I completed would ring every day asking what they had or hadn't done today, once I finally completed I was glad to wash my hands of them.

6 months after I had completed and moved in I was still being chased for me to sign and return the lease (bit concerning really). To add to this I must have had 5 or 6 different lease documents sent to me with variations of incorrect purchase price, incorrect percentage amount, someone else as the buyer (not me), sometimes my name against someone else's address. After many times informing them they have sent me the wrong document I finally received one that was completely correct and was swiftly signed and returned (this was before I completed) to then 6 months or so later asking for another one to be done was concerning but I just wanted to see the back of them.

I completed in June 16 and was still being chased for a signed lease in December and January 17 despite signing a correct copy well before I completed.

Now I know the lease would be from the sellers side solicitor but I was paying my solicitor to check these before sending them to me which clearly wasn't done many times but when I finally completed I was glad to see the back of them.

Now just over 2 years after completing (September 18) I find out it the wrong lease was registered so they obviously just copy and pasted and merged documents to make one which have turned out to be wrong.

I have been chasing this for months now and still not sorted and my mortgage offer has expired so will now have to begin the process all over again and as mentioned my current payments are around £100 a month more than I was moving onto which should have been a simple switch over.

After complaining to the solicitors directly the other day I received an apology and a cheque for £300 as a goodwill gesture for the mistakes.

Am I justified in thinking of this as an insult when we are looking at at least 6 months and counting I am paying around £100 a month more than I should be in terms of mortgage payments as well as I paid £2,000 for a service in the first place that I clearly did not receive.

Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place, I am a single person and this was my first house purchase so very inexperienced in this sort of thing.

I have taken the complaint further and have another 3 weeks before I can take this to the Ombudsman unless they return with a more satisfactory offer of apology.

Didn't know where else to ask advice as it's not exactly generic.

Many thanks.

Gareth