Help regarding new home rettention

lorr13

Hi.. We purchased a new home dec 2019..completion statement owed was £0 with no mention of retention...
April 2021 had a call from our solicitor who managed our sale saying in so manywords, we messed up... We gave u retention in your settlement figure (although we had no idea it was included) and now we need it to pay your seller...
I didnt have £5000 so queried the fact if they help retention why wasn't i informed of this and should of been kept by solicitors... All died of death and never had anymore correspondence..
Last week, 3yrs to moving in had a solicitor letter demanding we pay else court.. Suggested we urgently seek independent legal advice if do not agree with content of Letter.. Hace 14 days to pay else 8% charge... Plus suggested they had emailedbus prior to this letter which is totally untrue as went through my entire email box to see...
We had so many issues with our new build there are too many to list.. 
Our solicitor messed up and we was genuinely unaware.. 
I am in bits as times are so tough and i just don't know where we stand. 
Spoke to a local solicitor today.. Consultation £200plus vat.. Anything there after £275+vat for anything they do there after.
If we fight this neglegance could we end up worse off.. And as we don't havefubds to pay what do we do 

silvercar

If you feel your original solicitors made a mistake, you make a formal complaint to them. If you aren’t happy with their outcome you go to the ombudsman.

if you owe the money, you owe the money, but you should be able to arrange a payment schedule. You may be able to do this through the original solicitor, so they bare the burden of the costs of this.

lorr13

Thank you I did make a written complaint to them in April last year and got absolutely no correspondence so i assumed they had dealt with there fault. But another year later our home developer which was persimmon homes have obviously got there solicitor involved and the letter dropped on my mat on Friday... Which contained a very threatening content 

eddddy

You could try talking to the Legal Ombudsman about the poor service you've had from the solicitor. They advertise a phone number for enquiries. (I've never dealt with them, so I've no idea how much they'll help you.)

See:
https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/public/for-public-visitors/using-a-solicitor/complain-about-a-solicitor
https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/information-centre/consumer-resources/bringing-a-complaint-to-us/


But whilst you've suffered poor service, inconvenience, etc, you probably haven't suffered a financial loss.

Essentially, you didn't realise that you owed the £5k, so you spent the £5k on other things.  So perhaps a fair outcome would be that your solicitor pays Persimmon the £5k now - and you repay your solicitor in monthly installments. (You could try proposing that to your solicitor anyway.)

Jonboy_1984

Was a retention mentioned earlier in the conveyancing process (even in passing in the correspondence) and then missed off the final statement, or simply not mentioned.

What does it cover and have you seen evidence it is reasonable (we had a pro-rata service charge on our first purchase, that the sellers solicitor had completely mis-calculated and then our solicitor simply tried to pass it through to us without review).

TheJP

Would you not have queried why you had an additional £5k in your account? Surely you would have done your own calculations to ensure a) you didn't pay too much b) you didn't pay too less.

As others say, if you owe the money you owe the money. You can complain and may be able to negotiate a smaller amount due to the solicitors mistake.

martindow

If the OP raises a formal complaint now, would that at least pause any prospect of legal action?  As has been said, if money is owed it needs to be paid, but if necessary in instalments.  If it did go to court a judge could well agree to monthly payments in line with a person's ability to pay.

I think some have been a bit hard on the OP.  It is quite reasonable to accept the final accounts sent by a solicitor unless the figure is very out of step with what was expected.

user1977

martindow said:

If the OP raises a formal complaint now, would that at least pause any prospect of legal action?

Not really - the fact they owe the money to the vendor (assuming they do - not clear whether they're fully satisfied or understand that) is separate from it resulting from a c0ck-up by the OP's solicitor (or more likely by both solicitors - why would the vendor have completed if they knew they were £5k short?).

TheJP

I think some have been a bit hard on the OP.  It is quite reasonable to accept the final accounts sent by a solicitor unless the figure is very out of step with what was expected.

I think people are being honest rather than harsh, its common sense to check the final accounts with your own accounts to ensure that at least you aren't short changed. I'm sure the OP would have kicked up if they were £5k short but maybe less so being £5k up in funds.

When i sold and bought, i knew exactly what i should have had back from the settlement, i was out be 34p. Its the OPs responsibility to ensure they are happy with the settlement and if it all adds up. The question i posed was £5k is a big amount, how did the OP not notice this?

lorr13

Ok, so the completion statement shows full payment to persimmon homes for our purchase price... And the balance due to us that we received was not 5k up.. All the figures added up...

Spoke to CA today and they said if the full amount due to the seller is in your completion statment, which it is.. Then how have they come up with us owing the retention that they should of witheld? Surely the purchase  price would of been on the statment 5k less? As they should of retained it.. 

Full purchase price and other costs in completion statement all add up to our final balance figure..

So the solicitor must of messed up there figures? 
When they called me in april 2020 they said "ideally we should of retained the money, however this amount is due abd needs to be paid" 

We kept a lot of equity back to pay off a considerable amount of debt as ly husband being self employed had lost a full yrs work due to an operation. 
The balance was paid.. We paid off all our debts and that was it.... Was all gone.. 

why didnt the the solicitors pursue it from April 2020 which was our last communication?

We moved in dec 2019...

last Friday 18th nov 2022 i had this very distressing, demanding solicitor letter that quite frankly has been so distressing as life is tough enough as it is financially and we both work hard. 

user1977

Does anyone understand what the discrepancy actually is then?