House sale Fallen through advice needed.

Nowherefast

Hi all  

So, after waiting for over a year on a property which was in progress, we are now in the unfortunate position that the house has fallen through. The seller has decided to pull out due to the unfruitful merger of leases that were on the property.  

In summary, we looked at a house end of 2020 and put in an offer beginning of 2021. The property was advertised as Freehold by the estate agents, which is what we want so we paid for a home survey etc. and all was looking good. But after 4 months later we received the land registry documents from our solicitors showing that the property was freehold as well as leasehold. We questioned this and Solicitor said upon completion these could be combined to become freehold.  

Several months later with me making regular calls to the solicitors to get an update, we always got told they are waiting for the Sellers Solicitors to come back to them. This was all very frustrating at the time as we wanted this completed before the stamp duty exemption in March 2021 but luckily at the time, this was extended till October 2021. I then asked to have a meeting in person around September 2021 as I had found out from making my own investigations to the land registry that there was also a Headlease on the property which was not mentioned. We outlined this to the solicitor and the solicitor said they will make more inquiries. We waited again with no further progression as they cannot find out who has the owner of the head lease. So now in Jan 2022, the seller said they would like to pull out of the sale due to these issues etc. 

 
 

Sorry about the lengthy post but we would like to know is there anything we can do or take action as we just feel we should have been made aware on the leasehold / Head-lease issue much earlier on if we knew earlier, we would not have proceeded further let alone paying for the home survey. And top of that the solicitors' fees! 

Thanks in Advance.

Nowherefast

AFF8879 said:

Whilst it’s understandably incredibly frustrating, I don’t think you’ll be entitled to any form of remedy / compensation- this is exactly why you employed a solicitor, to make you aware of material matters that might dissuade you from buying a property. That aside, you found out about the existing lease in April 2021 and chose not to pull out of the transaction so any small chance of a comeback vs the EA 7 months later has probably disappeared.

I know it’s difficult after being invested for over a year but one to chalk up to experience and move on 

Hi thanks for you reply and can understand this would be the case, But in April 2021 we was also told the leasehold could be merged as one into a freehold absolute  , the Owner of the property had the Freehold and leasehold in owners name . But there was also a 3rd issue which was not outlined to use at the time which was a Headlease which I found doing my own enquiries.

kazwookie

Move on, start looking for another property.

I personally would be very !!!!!! at solicitors and vendor.

Nowherefast

kazwookie said:

Move on, start looking for another property.

I personally would be very !!!!!! at solicitors and vendor.

Hi yes we are already prepared to move on and look for something else was just wondering on peoples input if any options if anything could be done in terms of compensation but does not look likely.
just not happy that it has dragged out so long !

saajan_12

No claim against any of the involved parties:

• Vendor - you have no contract with them until exchange. They are not obligated to tell you anything upfront about the property, its up to you to make enquiries. 
• Vendor's solicitor - no contract with them, the vendor is the one who can complain if service standards fell short
• EA - No civil claim. At best its misadvertising for which you can complain and ultimately refer up to the ombudsman who might assess compensation. However the EA would rely on what they are told, and it sounds like no one knew the full picture until it all unfolded, so no compo
• Your solicitor - they did nothing wrong

This is just part of house buying - you invest monies to investigate something and avoid a bigger headache later on. The investigation may cost some money which you don't recover.