Misinformation From Buyer's Solicitor Lead to Additional Costs - Can I Claim Back?

shortstack86

I'm hopefully coming to the end of an exceptionally long conveyancing process. It's obvious the buyer's solicitor has an unmanageable caseload. They take weeks to respond to emails and the estate agent advised me the buyer was on hold for an hour and a half before being able to discuss the status of his purchase last week. It has taken months for them to review documents such as management packs but most concerning of all is they provided misinformation that resulted in me incurring additional solicitor fees. The buyer's conveyancer emailed my solicitor to advise the terms of the ground rent rent doubling every 25 years was unacceptable to the lender, when in actual fact the lender accepts ground rent doubling anything over 20 years. Before learning who the lender was and being able to disprove their claim, my solicitor suggested an indemnity was drafted at a cost of £90. As I now know this was unnecessary and only drafted due to false information provided, I'm hoping I can request to recoup this loss. I know it's an insignificant sum in the scheme of things, but this particular issue has resulted in a 7 week delay and when (if) the sale finally completes, I would like to at least provide the buyer with admission of improper advice and give him a case to contact the Legal Ombudsman should he wish to pursue. 

 Any advice would be really appreciated. 

nicmyles

Maybe?
But honestly, you're likely to spend more time trying to get it back than £90 is worth if you go down legal routes.
The most I would do is ask your solicitor to ask the buyer's solicitor for them to refund it - they might just do it for an easy life because, again, they will spend more than £90 worth of their time on dealing with any attempt to recoup it.

AskAsk

no you can't.  part and parcel of the whole process.

davidmcn

shortstack86 said:

Before learning who the lender was and being able to disprove their claim, my solicitor suggested an indemnity was drafted at a cost of £90. As I now know this was unnecessary and only drafted due to false information provided, I'm hoping I can request to recoup this loss. 

Sounds more like you should be recouping it from your solicitor for deciding to start work on the indemnity policy rather than just argue it away first.

shortstack86

nicmyles said:

Maybe?
But honestly, you're likely to spend more time trying to get it back than £90 is worth if you go down legal routes.
The most I would do is ask your solicitor to ask the buyer's solicitor for them to refund it - they might just do it for an easy life because, again, they will spend more than £90 worth of their time on dealing with any attempt to recoup it.

You could be right. I'm hoping an email from my solicitor will be enough for them to reimburse the costs, I probably wouldn't consider pursuing if it was going to cost me anything additional. It would certainly help me sleep better though knowing that I helped form a case for the buyer to pursue with the Legal Ombudsman. Even if it only leads to retraining the member of staff that provided the misinformation, maybe it would lead to less misery for buyers/ seller that use this particular conveyancer down the line. 

Thrugelmir

shortstack86 said:

nicmyles said:

Maybe?
But honestly, you're likely to spend more time trying to get it back than £90 is worth if you go down legal routes.
The most I would do is ask your solicitor to ask the buyer's solicitor for them to refund it - they might just do it for an easy life because, again, they will spend more than £90 worth of their time on dealing with any attempt to recoup it.

It would certainly help me sleep better though knowing that I helped form a case for the buyer to pursue with the Legal Ombudsman. 

I suspect your buyer isn't going to have the slightest interest in your vendetta.  

shortstack86

You suspect wrongly. The estate agent suggested the buyer wants to build a case. This isn’t really about spite either, more about doing my bit to prevent others from the experiencing the same stress down the line:

Thrugelmir

shortstack86 said:

You suspect wrongly. The estate agent suggested the buyer wants to build a case. This isn’t really about spite either, more about doing my bit to prevent others from the experiencing the same stress down the line:

Property transactions have always been stressfull. Nothing new in that. 

Tiglet2

Your solicitor would normally send the draft indemnity policy to the buyer's solicitor for their approval.  The fees would normally be taken out of the sale proceeds on completion, so you shouldn't have already paid for the policy.  In this case there would be no problem cancelling the policy if it is no longer required.  Please check this with your solicitor.

shortstack86

Tiglet2 said:

Your solicitor would normally send the draft indemnity policy to the buyer's solicitor for their approval.  The fees would normally be taken out of the sale proceeds on completion, so you shouldn't have already paid for the policy.  In this case there would be no problem cancelling the policy if it is no longer required.  Please check this with your solicitor.

Thanks for this. Hopefully this can be cancelled then. I wrongly assumed the fee related to the admin/ drafting rather than the policy itself 

shortstack86

Thrugelmir said:

shortstack86 said:

You suspect wrongly. The estate agent suggested the buyer wants to build a case. This isn’t really about spite either, more about doing my bit to prevent others from the experiencing the same stress down the line:

Property transactions have always been stressfull. Nothing new in that. 

Your assumption is again incorrect. I'm not sure why one would take the time to respond to queries just to be a contrarian, rather than actually attempting to offer advice from a genuine query. The purchase of this property 18 months ago went through promptly, without any stress whatsoever aided be competent solicitors who were in regular communication with all concerned parties.