Advice regarding some issues during exchange/completion of purchasing first property

Tom_Ballard

Eako said:

New to the forum, first post - I apologise if its formatted incorrectly or lacks certain information, I'm by no means clued up on the legal side of things here.

First time buyer, using an 'old style' help to buy 1 (200p/m, government adds 0.25x when purchasing property, not sure of the offical name) and property is something we would consider a 'forever home' purchased by my partner and I.

We're in a bit of a situation at the moment, we recently had our survey finished around the start of August and came back acceptable to us, we arranged a completion date of the 19th August through solicitors, then had it pushed forward to the 16th August, which was agreed upon by both parties. Fast forward to Wednesday just gone (10th August), I was requested to close my ISA and to provide a closing statement (was also sent a load of documents to sign). Thursday (11th August), we still had no indication that anything was wrong with that date, signed all our relevant documents as requested, dropped them off in-branch. At this point I was provided a completion statement, requesting the full deposit and solicitors fees (minus the bonus). This was promptly paid and I rang on the Friday (12th August) to confirm it had gone through and been received, which it had.

Friday afternoon/night, we received an email telling us that we could no longer complete on the 16th. As our completion date was the 16th, we had arranged for all relevant bills to cancel on the 21st, ended our tenancy, had taken a week off work and had arranged with family and a company to move a large amount of things. Companies were rang to arrange utilities for the property and other providers such as Internet providers were contacted also. The date we were then given was the 25th. Which would be the Thursday after the planned week off to sort everything. Our solicitors appeared under the impression that this was an agreed date, but said that since no exchange was done, nothing could be done. The seller's solicitors appeared adamant that it was provisional.

I understand this is a vague block of text and being honest, I'm just a little swamped with everything that has gone on. I feel like my money should not have yet been taken and I feel like we've been messed around a little bit, being given 2 working days notice that our completion date is no longer valid. Is this standard and is there (as I expect) nothing we can do?

My biggest fear is the purchase falling through, which would mean (presumably) I lose the solicitors deposit, search deposit and other financial agreements we have in place for the move, we potentially could end up temporarily homeless or without utilities as the tenancy was ended and there's also the fact that I've wasted a full week of time off that is now essentially useless.

I do feel like we've done things a bit messily, I feel like the solicitors haven't exactly done us an injustice but we've somewhat had the rug pulled out from under us and I'm left with worries about the property and what we're going to do.

I'm really just seeking advice at this point. Is it worth panicking over? Am I really going to lose this house or should I just hold my breath, grit my teeth and agree to the 25th?

Thank you so much also, for taking the time to read this and any help is very, very appreciated.

We were delayed so many times for exchange and completion - our purchaser even went into default for 5d leaving us with no furniture and a house full of dogs, with nowhere to move into! 

Echoing what others have said - unless there is something when you exchanged providing a firm completion date all you need to do is wait it out... it can be very expensive to pursue any legal action in this case and is likely to be more hassle than its worth