Solicitor mistakes

Manda1505

Me and ex partner have put our home up for sale, we have accepted and offer on the house, everything has gone through ok until our solicitor rang and said when we bought the house in 2006, our then solicitor didn’t take the vendors name of the deeds, we rang the solicitor who dealt with that sale and said there’s nothing he can do because he cannot find ex vendor so now the sale of the house will fall through, we really don’t know what to do and if we have a claim 

user1977

Your (current) solicitor should be able to advise on that, surely?

Manda1505

He just said the solicitor who dealt with the sale in 2006 has to sort it out, but he cannot find that vendor so there’s nothing he can do, it’s a massive error and made the house unsellable 

user1977

What efforts has your previously solicitor actually made to find the vendor? Why did they not get the transfer deed at the time? Why haven't they contacted you about this in the past fifteen years? Do you have a mortgage?

If there is "nothing he can do", ultimately he's going to have to compensate you for your losses, so he'll need to pass it to his insurers to sort out.

Keep_pedalling

I doubt very much that there is nothing they can do. I am not sure they even need to trace the previous buyer as both parties were represented by conveyancer and they should be able to correct this.

You first off need to raise a formal complaint with the firm of solicitors, every firm must have a complaints procedure and they must provide you with this on request if it is not already on their website. If they fail to provide you with a satisfactory response within 8 weeks, then you can escalate the complaint to the legal ombudsman.

https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/information-centre/consumer-resources/complaining-to-a-service-provider/

GDB2222

user1977 said:

What efforts has your previously solicitor actually made to find the vendor? Why did they not get the transfer deed at the time? Why haven't they contacted you about this in the past fifteen years? Do you have a mortgage?

If there is "nothing he can do", ultimately he's going to have to compensate you for your losses, so he'll need to pass it to his insurers to sort out.

Any claims against the old solicitor may well be statute-barred. Even under the Latent Damage Act, there's a longstop limit of 15 years. 

I imagine that this can be sorted out eventually. One way might be to follow the adverse possession route. Although that would take a couple of years, it ought to be pretty cheap.

GDB2222

I wonder whether the SDLT is outstanding?  If the solicitor pocketed that money, it would be a criminal offence.

Manda1505

Yes we have a mortgage, as far as we are concerned our mortgage lenders have the deeds until the morgage is paid nobody has ever picked up on this not even morgage lender we have totally been in the dark, so is the bank at fault also for not picking up on this, it’s a right mess, but still we cannot sell house until it’s sorted and we have spilt up so we at our wit ends and can’t seem to know where to get advice xx

steampowered

It might be an idea to do a good search to see if you can find the vendor. It doesn't sound like your former solicitor has tried very hard.

You could use a "tracing agent" who specialise in finding people, it is actually a very cheap service.

If you ever got a forwarding address, you could download the register for that property on the Land Registry website to see if the vendor is still there? 

You can ultimately go to court to get this sorted if you need to, but might be easier to try and find the vendor and ask them nicely to sign the land registry form TR1.

Manda1505

We have found the vendors son on Facebook and messaged him but no response back, we really trying hard because we didn’t want this sale to fall through 

user1977

Manda1505 said:

Yes we have a mortgage, as far as we are concerned our mortgage lenders have the deeds

No, they won't have anything - their charge can't be registered if your title isn't. Normally lenders are fairly hot on checking and following up with solicitors if their charge doesn't appear to have been registered, so it seems odd they've been unaware all this time.

so is the bank at fault also for not picking up on this

No, they're not liable to you.

can’t seem to know where to get advice xx

If your current solicitor can't be persuaded to help then you may need to find another one.