Solicitors didn't check buyer had instructed

Chel50

Hi there. 
I find myself in the most bizarre of situations having sold my house 3 months ago and in the process of buying another, racking up costs on solicitors and time on arranging to port my mortgage. I called my solicitor to check when my buyer expects to exchange to be told they have had zero communication from her solicitor. Even though I filled out all my forms already and the online system they use shows as no outstanding actions, preparing to exchange. There is now a panic on trying to find out if this buyer was ever even genuine. Apparently she hadn't instructed the solicitors whose name she provided at the beginning and there are attempts only now to contact her and ask her to do so immediately or the house goes back on the market.

If she doesn't respond I will in all likelihood have to abort my purchase and pay abortive costs as well as my mortgage valuation fee.  
My question would be should the solicitor have made checks to ensure that my buyer had actually instructed her solicitor as a standard procedure? Would i have a case for compensation? The solicitors did not, as far as i can ascertain, follow up in the entire 3 months that have gone by to check that she had instructed. It is the 3rd time I've sold a house and I've never come across such a situation. 
Many thanks for your help. 

GiGi85

This is shocking. Did you sell through an estate agents? They usually make sure of this and can chase throughout the process. Solicitors usually write to each other to confirm they have been instructed. Did you do any checking or chasing your self? Did you not wonder why now enquiries? 

Sorry more questions than answers. 

[Deleted User]

To have got to the ready to exchange part of the process and be in this situation is indeed odd; at all stages throughout the solicitors and agents are in touch with each other and the agents will have been liasing with each other too - and feedback to you tells you what's going on - one reason for chasing all the time.

I've bought and sold dozens of houses and only once, the last time, did i encounter anything other than the usual processes - the buyers solicitors were truly awful.

However, in your case, it would appear that you probably need to apply the brakes now because until the slowest part/person of the transaction catches up with you you've jumped the gun and could now find that you've been much too premature.

As already asked - did you chase up all the time ?
In my last move i was chasing twice a week sometimes, some transactions just need you to do all the work !

hazyjo

I spoke to my EA loads about my buyer throughout my last sale and find it very hard to believe you didn't think it odd nobody had mentioned them in all that time. Didn't you ask about them having a survey? Or fill out a fixtures and fittings form? Where did your solicitor send that?

kingstreet

Typically, a vendor's solicitor will await a memorandum of sale (MOS) from the selling agent, then issue a draft contract to the purchaser's solicitor named on the MOS. Did this take place?

trex227

I used to work at a solicitors and it sounds like she may have told the estate agent she was going to use x solicitor so the memo of sale was issued on this basis. Your solicitor issued the draft contracts to this firm. However the buyer herself had made no contact with the solicitors she had said she was going to use so the contract just sits in unallocated post.

You would be surprised how common this is, we sometimes got 3 contract packs a week having never had any contact with our supposed client. We would eventually contact the solicitors to get estate agent details to follow up but I know it’s incredibly busy in the industry at the minute so it could just be sitting there.

On several occasions clients were angry we hadn’t done any work.... when I pointed out they had never spoken to us how did we know they actually wanted to use us they wouldn’t have an answer.

Flugelhorn

trex227 said:

I used to work at a solicitors and it sounds like she may have told the estate agent she was going to use x solicitor so the memo of sale was issued on this basis. Your solicitor issued the draft contracts to this firm. However the buyer herself had made no contact with the solicitors she had said she was going to use so the contract just sits in unallocated post.

You would be surprised how common this is, we sometimes got 3 contract packs a week having never had any contact with our supposed client. We would eventually contact the solicitors to get estate agent details to follow up but I know it’s incredibly busy in the industry at the minute so it could just be sitting there.

On several occasions clients were angry we hadn’t done any work.... when I pointed out they had never spoken to us how did we know they actually wanted to use us they wouldn’t have an answer.

you were probably meant to be mind readers ... happens in all sorts of fields. Was thinking that the contract pack probably went out and just never came back and the solicitors didn't chase, can imagine that that would be the case at present as they are so busy

Chel50

trex227 said:

I used to work at a solicitors and it sounds like she may have told the estate agent she was going to use x solicitor so the memo of sale was issued on this basis. Your solicitor issued the draft contracts to this firm. However the buyer herself had made no contact with the solicitors she had said she was going to use so the contract just sits in unallocated post.

You would be surprised how common this is, we sometimes got 3 contract packs a week having never had any contact with our supposed client. We would eventually contact the solicitors to get estate agent details to follow up but I know it’s incredibly busy in the industry at the minute so it could just be sitting there.

On several occasions clients were angry we hadn’t done any work.... when I pointed out they had never spoken to us how did we know they actually wanted to use us they wouldn’t have an answer.

Hi There, 
This is exactly what has happened. In fact, it was 8 weeks rather than three months. I had no reason to suspect there was a problem because the client was supposed to be buying through sale of proceeds, and so might not have worried about doing a valuation. Also the online system I was using for the solicitor shows a set of actions and they were all complete - the status was on "preparing to exchange". I learned a painful lesson here - make sure someone checks that the buyer has actually instructed. I would never have thought that could happen. Fingers crossed, she comes back today and does so, if not as others have suggested I'll put the brakes on my property purchase - at least I've not paid for the full structural which was £900 and so count small blessings. The bigger problem is not having sold my house and the fact that if I don't get the same offer again, then I definitely won't be able to buy the property I really wanted. Live and learn....
Thanks.  

trex227

If you are selling through an estate agent I would be very annoyed with them, why haven’t they checked with the buyer or their supposed solicitor how things are proceeding in the last 8 weeks?

Conveyancing is in some respects reactionary- you get correspondence in and you action it. I would imagine given how busy the market is your conveyancer hasn’t had time to look into files where they’ve not heard anything. This is where the value of estate agents is, they chase things and keep things moving.

Chel50

trex227 said:

If you are selling through an estate agent I would be very annoyed with them, why haven’t they checked with the buyer or their supposed solicitor how things are proceeding in the last 8 weeks?

Conveyancing is in some respects reactionary- you get correspondence in and you action it. I would imagine given how busy the market is your conveyancer hasn’t had time to look into files where they’ve not heard anything. This is where the value of estate agents is, they chase things and keep things moving.

Yes, I'm with a popular online/digital agent, and their post-sales team takes over once the property is sold. I haven't pushed their post-sales team at all on this - in retrospect I should have done. The buyer is saying she still wants the property but won't instruct until she has completed on hers so that she has the cash in her hand! They have now had to go back eight weeks later and tell her this is not how things work! I think there is some family pressure there, who knows, but ultimately unless she pulls her finger out today, the property is going back on the market. Live and learn...
Thanks for your info!

trex227

I think your situation shows the big drawback with the big online estate agents. In that job on occasion I would have to close out files that had not completed on an internal system. It always seemed to me that a higher percentage of sales through online estate agents fell through compared to traditional estate agents (although I never measured it exactly, it was noticeable). Maybe it was just the individual online agents in the areas we operated were not very good, who knows. But this seemed to tally with what my colleagues in the conveyancing department reported- compared to regular estate agents the online agents involvement in the transaction was much less.

It just seems to me when you are paying upfront (or deferred which don't you have to pay after a certain amount of time anyway?) that the agent has an incentive to get a sale agreed, so they've fulfilled their part, but then has no incentive to actually get the sale to completion.

If this falls though, once you have another sale agreed keep onto the post sales team. Don't feel you are harassing them, you've paid for their service!