Sale defunct at last stages due to clause in deeds - who's at fault?

Tom99

Is the restriction listed on the title register?

'Form V (Section 157 of the Housing Act 1985) No transfer or lease by the proprietor of the registered estate or by the proprietor of any registered charge is to be registered unless a certificate by {specify relevant local authority or housing association etc} is given that the transfer or lease is made in accordance with section 157 of the Housing Act 1985.'

I thought that one of the 1st things a solicitor does is to obtain a copy of the Land Reg title and plan.

lisyloo

Do solicitors not do things in a certain order.
E.g. first establish person has the right to sell the house, before spending loads of money on searches etc.

davidmcn

lisyloo wrote: »

Do solicitors not do things in a certain order.
E.g. first establish person has the right to sell the house, before spending loads of money on searches etc.

Not necessarily, we can do things in any order we like. The time-saving way is just to do the due diligence in whatever order the information becomes available. In the unlikely event that there is a fundamental problem, we don't know in advance at what stage that will be discovered.

steampowered

It isn't the solicitors fault. It sounds like the solicitors flagged this up as soon as they received the title deeds.

It isn't the EA's fault. The EA can only go on what they are told by the sellers.

It might be the seller's fault. But you have no legal relationship with the seller, and they were not obliged to disclose things. And the seller might not even have remembered about the restriction if they had been living in the property for many years.

I think you just have to take the loss and start searching for another property.

Davesnave

steampowered wrote: »

It might be the seller's fault. But you have no legal relationship with the seller, and they were not obliged to disclose things. And the seller might not even have remembered about the restriction if they had been living in the property for many years.

While I agree that the seller has no legal obligation to disclose the restriction, I can't believe they did not remember; otherwise how would the first EA have known and flagged it up?

Its existence would impact on the valuation and the price they could expect too.

Finally, if the property had been advertised correctly by first EA and the ad is still accessible, proving this, how is it the OP did not spot this?

getmore4less

Why had you not looked at the history before proceeding?

Standard buyer due diligence to check the history of a property and similar to gauge value.