Selling property - Estate agent hasn't confirmed proof of funds in place

Daldodo

Daldodo said:

Thrugelmir said:

A solicitor shouldn't allow their client to exchange unless the funds are in place to complete the transaction. There's no benefit in you having sight of the other parties personal financial circumstances. 

Yup. That's not what I'm driving at though. The EA has been flaky with regards to the sellers AIP, hence the question to the EA about the sellers finances. The purpose of asking the EA for sight of the sellers finances was to try to get them to just confirm they themselves were in receipt of them. That would have been a sufficient answer from the EA. But their flakiness flagged up concerns, cheers. Re sols....my sol has been brilliannt and advised me not to proceed. 

sorry - buyer, not sellers finances. 

Ath_Wat

Daldodo said:

Thrugelmir said:

A solicitor shouldn't allow their client to exchange unless the funds are in place to complete the transaction. There's no benefit in you having sight of the other parties personal financial circumstances. 

Yup. That's not what I'm driving at though. The EA has been flaky with regards to the sellers AIP, hence the question to the EA about the sellers finances. The purpose of asking the EA for sight of the sellers finances was to try to get them to just confirm they themselves were in receipt of them. That would have been a sufficient answer from the EA. But their flakiness flagged up concerns, cheers. Re sols....my sol has been brilliannt and advised me not to proceed. 

What, because the estate agent won't send you a mortgage in principle?

eddddy

The OP seems a bit confused, and this thread has gone in 2 different directions, which might have confused them even more. Maybe taking a step back...


An EA is supposed to do a Financial Evaluation of a buyer, and tell the seller the details, before their offer is finally accepted.

The Property Ombudsman describes it like this:

10. Financial Evaluation

10a At the time that an offer has been made and is being considered by the seller, you must take reasonable steps to find out from the buyer the source and availability of their funds for buying the property and pass this information to the seller. Such information will include whether the buyer needs to sell a property, requires a mortgage, claims to be a cash buyer (*) or any combination of these. Such relevant information that is available should be included in the memorandum of sale having regard to data protection laws.

10c These reasonable steps must continue after acceptance of the offer until exchange of contracts and must include regular monitoring of the buyer’s progress in achieving the funds required, and reporting such progress to the seller.

Link: https://www.tpos.co.uk/images/codes-of-practice/TPOE27-8_Code_of_Practice_for_Residential_Estate_Agents_A4_FINAL.pdf

If the buyer needs a mortgage, EAs would almost always ask to see a mortgage MIP/AIP as part of this process. The EA would be very lax, if they failed to do this.

The EA should confirm to the seller whether they've seen the MIP/AIP. The EA might just look at it and not keep a copy. It's not usual to send a copy to the seller.




But... the OP is confused, because they say:

Daldodo said:

 I am worried because if the buyer doesn't have a mortgage in place then I could be vulnerable. They could use their own cash to cover the deposit. then after that...who knows what could happen after exchange if they don't actually have the MIP in place.

Failing to complete a purchase after exchanging contracts is a completely different issue. It's very unlikely to happen, and the presence or absence of a MIP/AIP is nothing to do with that.

No rational buyer would exchange contracts on the strength of a MIP/AIP, they would wait until they had a full mortgage offer.

babyblade41

We had to wait 4 weeks for our buyers mortgage offer,  no solicitor would exchange until this is in place .. it would be bonkers if in fact illegal as how could one pursue failure to complete when the buyers solicitor hadn't done the relevant checks ..another story for another day maybe 

EA should always check the relevance to proceed financially , to actually show the seller the docs again is also unheard of , just as long as EA can confirm there is a MIP in place is suffice.

The rest is done during the due diligence process

julicorn

We had quite a few 'source of funds' checks over the last few months from estate agents when offering on a property, and all they ever did was ask for our deposit amount and income. I could have told them anything basically.