Solicitor delay means don't meet stamp duty deadline

Tiglet2

No solicitors that I know would guarantee completion by the stamp duty deadline.  It's all dependent upon so many other third parties and unknown title issues which can drastically alter the time needed to complete a transaction.  In conclusion, yes it can be done, however there will be no guarantee.  It is what it is.  You entered this transaction in March, when transactions were routinely taking 4 months or so to reach completion - you were up against it from the start.

Believe it or not, sometimes it is the clients themselves that delay returning documents and sending in the required funds and ID documents.  Who knows why the investor paid in March but searches were not ordered until May.  By the way, I've yet to meet a conveyancing solicitor that plays golf during the working day.

saajan_12

Anything done to get recourse from the slow solicitors? No:
- no contracts exchanged with the buyer
- even less agreed with the buyer's buyer
- even even less with the buyer's buyer's solicitor
- Also any responsibility on the solicitor would be to investigate specific legal and conveyancing matters, not necessarily to guarantee or even work to a particular timeline. 

Anything done practically? Maybe:
- If you or anyone else in the chain can afford to temporarily own / have mortgage on two properties, they can break the chain. They and the chain above them can go ahead with the purchases, with the bottom half would then complete later. Note the bottom half could also fall through, so the temporary situation could become months while the bottom chain reforms. 
- If investor is motivated, they could get indemnity instead of some searches. 

eddddy

Sazzy21 said:

Surely there's something that can be done due to the fact the solicitor took 2 months before even applying for searches??? 

Be a little cautious about believing what the 'investor' (or any buyer or seller) says.

It's a fairly standard excuse - to say something is their solicitor's fault - because nobody else has any way of disproving that. It could equally be that the investor was delaying for some other reason.

But that possibility doesn't really help you much anyway. Except that if the investor has been 'playing games' up until now, they might continue to.

NameUnavailable

I was strung along by an 'investor' buyer for months, always just another couple of weeks away from exchanging. In the end it turned out that they couldn't get the funds together to buy (so called cash buyer!).

Take anything you are told with a large sack of salt!

TBagpuss

If the investor instructed their solicitor to submit the searches in March, and provided them with the funds and any other document or information needed at that point, and the solicitor did not follow their instructions, then the *investor* may have a complaint against their solicitor, but you and the others in the chain don't, you aren't party to the their contract (and are basing all this on 2nd or 3rd hand  information)

As others have said, it's very, very common for people to blame their conveyancer or solicitor regardless of whether they are in fact at fault.

It sounds as though your offer was made at a time when there was never any guarantee you'd be able to meet the deadline, so presumably you planned for the possibly that you wouldn't? 

user1977

Also - an investor is likely to take a pragmatic view about search results (if required at all) and enquiries. If they're stalling then I suspect it may well be for their own purposes.