How long can solicitors hold funds from lender for?

hpsauce86

Hi all,

Having a total nightmare with our house purchase. We were told we were completing today, so our funds were requested from the lender (NatWest) and received by our solicitors on the 9th. 

It now looks unlikely we will complete today, and our solicitor have said we will have to send funds back to the lender. Does anyone know if they could hold them until tomorrow if we were able to complete then rather than today? 

(It’s nothing to do with our delays, it’s down to an issue with Land Registry, apparently the third time there’s been an error on our vendors new build searches with LR. We were told they might have been resolved on Friday but as yet they haven’t been).

Pulling my hair out, have ulcers in my mouth and I’ve had a migraine and no sleep for 2 weeks now. 😩🥺😢

user1977

hpsauce86 said:

Having a total nightmare with our house purchase. We were told we were completing today, so our funds were requested from the lender (NatWest) and received by our solicitors on the 9th. 

It now looks unlikely we will complete today, and our solicitor have said we will have to send funds back to the lender. Does anyone know if they could hold them until tomorrow if we were able to complete then rather than today? 

NatWest standard instructions are to return the funds no later than the next day:

https://lendershandbook.ukfinance.org.uk/lenders-handbook/englandandwales/national-westminster-bank-plc/#C8781

which I'd interpret as instead allowing completion to happen the next day - but there'd need to be some certainty that it was actually going to happen.

hpsauce86

user1977 said:

hpsauce86 said:

Having a total nightmare with our house purchase. We were told we were completing today, so our funds were requested from the lender (NatWest) and received by our solicitors on the 9th. 

It now looks unlikely we will complete today, and our solicitor have said we will have to send funds back to the lender. Does anyone know if they could hold them until tomorrow if we were able to complete then rather than today? 

NatWest standard instructions are to return the funds no later than the next day:

https://lendershandbook.ukfinance.org.uk/lenders-handbook/englandandwales/national-westminster-bank-plc/#C8781

which I'd interpret as instead allowing completion to happen the next day - but there'd need to be some certainty that it was actually going to happen.

Thanks! Unfortunately no real certainty yet, our solicitors weren’t even aware of the issues with land registry until we told them today, shows how shoddy our vendors solicitors are! 

Hoping they might have it sorted but our vendor has also rearranged her movers for tomorrow now instead of today. It’s just a total mess.

housebuyer143

Next time insist you exchange first before completion. 
This will prevent you ordering the money and being out of pocket for the chaps fees when the money goes back. 

hpsauce86

housebuyer143 said:

Next time insist you exchange first before completion. 
This will prevent you ordering the money and being out of pocket for the chaps fees when the money goes back. 

We didn’t have a choice, we were told we’d be exchanging on Friday and our solicitor was on leave, she requested funds because we were told this would be it and we hadn’t been at that point before. We can’t afford to delay it any longer, we’re close to running out our mortgage extension. We have been waiting 7.5 months for it to go through. I’ll be asking our vendors solicitors to pay for the chaps fees.

The vendors solicitor has said they still need two things on her new build to be able to register our vendor as the owner. The developers solicitor are ignoring them, meanwhile our vendor has booked a moving van for tomorrow morning despite the fact we don’t know whether we even will complete. It’s a total mess. No one says the same thing, all the solicitors contradict each other and blame one another and we are totally powerless to do anything but the ones most out of pocket. It’s insane it can even happen like this. 

housebuyer143

hpsauce86 said:

housebuyer143 said:

Next time insist you exchange first before completion. 
This will prevent you ordering the money and being out of pocket for the chaps fees when the money goes back. 

We didn’t have a choice, we were told we’d be exchanging on Friday and our solicitor was on leave, she requested funds because we were told this would be it and we hadn’t been at that point before. We can’t afford to delay it any longer, we’re close to running out our mortgage extension. We have been waiting 7.5 months for it to go through. I’ll be asking our vendors solicitors to pay for the chaps fees.

The vendors solicitor has said they still need two things on her new build to be able to register our vendor as the owner. The developers solicitor are ignoring them, meanwhile our vendor has booked a moving van for tomorrow morning despite the fact we don’t know whether we even will complete. It’s a total mess. No one says the same thing, all the solicitors contradict each other and blame one another and we are totally powerless to do anything but the ones most out of pocket. It’s insane it can even happen like this. 

Tell me about it. My purchase we were told by the other side that all was good to go. Then on the day of exchange and completion they changed an enquiry response and thought it would be okay and it wasn't and we had the whole ordeal. Took two weeks to resolve the problems before we tried again.

Tiglet2

The vendors solicitor has said they still need two things on her new build to be able to register our vendor as the owner. 

You won't be completing until the above is resolved.  Is your vendor selling a fairly new build house to you, but they are not the registered owners because they only purchased it a year ago, or so?

housebuyer143

Who decided this would be the completion date? Did the agent get you all on board for this date or did they solicitors agree and tell you? 
Normally it's when the agent gets involved and decide dates that these things happen because the solicitors are not ready and can't make that date that everyone is pushing for.