Failure to complete

AdrianC

ellieh01 said:

I’m a bit confused about the charge on the register - surely even if I had NOT remortgaged, the charge would have had to be removed anyway? So the fact that there’s a delay is nothing to do with the remortgage?

Lender A's charge would be removed, by paying Lender A their money back. But you owe Lender A nothing.

Your solicitor needs to pay Lender B back... but they can't remove Lender A's charge. They can only remove their own charge, but that isn't on the record yet.

Lender A's charge is in the process of being removed from the LR record, with Lender B's being added, but this isn't instant... That's the hole you've fallen down by this last-minute remortgage.

ellieh01

User1977, bear with me for being stupid - so the previous solicitor redeemed my mortgage with HSBC and moved me to Nationwide. The current solicitor is supposed to redeem with Nationwide and move me to my new lender, BUT they thought (until two weeks ago) they were meant to redeem with HSBC. They’re saying HSBC’s charge hasn’t been discharged. If they thought they were supposed to redeem with HSBC, then shouldn’t that have been dealt with already?

ellieh01

User1977, in any case, do you know if completion is at risk, or can something be done? The current solicitor didn’t mention the previous solicitor providing an undertaking as an option for resolving this. They said to either expedite or withdraw the application. 

user1977

ellieh01 said:

User1977, bear with me for being stupid - so the previous solicitor redeemed my mortgage with HSBC and moved me to Nationwide. The current solicitor is supposed to redeem with Nationwide and move me to my new lender, BUT they thought (until two weeks ago) they were meant to redeem with HSBC. They’re saying HSBC’s charge hasn’t been discharged. If they thought they were supposed to redeem with HSBC, then shouldn’t that have been dealt with already?

Yes, but the redemption was done by the solicitors you used for the remortgage.

ellieh01

Is it possible to fix it by getting the previous conveyancer to provide an undertaking?

ellieh01

I honestly never thought this would happen. The broker did not give me options that were more expensive but administratively simpler. He knew I was expecting to buy a new place. 

user1977

ellieh01 said:

Is it possible to fix it by getting the previous conveyancer to provide an undertaking?

See the first reply on this thread...

ellieh01

Thank you I saw that - the current solicitor didn’t mention that as an option, which was strange. Is that something the buyer’s solicitor would be ok with?

HopeAndDriftWood

Nobody here can comprehensively answer whether an undertaking would work - theoretically, if the first solicitor is happy to offer one, and your buyer's solicitor/lender is happy to accept one, that'll be fine.

But if the first solicitor won't offer one - some don't, there's previous threads about it - or if it's not enough for your buyer or their lender, it'll likely delay completion. As a previous poster said, you'd then get a notice to complete, which would give you an extra two weeks - but you'd be liable to reasonable chain costs, like hotel costs or removals. 

TBG01

ellieh01 said:

He knew I was expecting to buy a new place. 

And? As far as he is concerned he did what you asked of him, which was for him to source you a mortgage product. That's him done. He's not involved with the conveyancing.

If you had checked with the solicitor handling the sale they would've no doubt told you how much of a bad idea it is. So as someone who works in conveyancing it really annoys me how many clients will side with brokers and estate agents because they simply give them the answer they were looking for.