No response from developers holding up house sale

Troy_af

So, I am currently selling my home and so far I have had no issues with the whole process. Many houses have sold recently in the same development etc. Now my solicitor is telling me that they require a deed of covenant and a certificate of compliance from the developers in order for me to sell.

The problem is that my solicitor is having no luck in getting any cooperation or even a reply from the developer or their solicitors.

It is written into the deeds that I need this in order to transfer the property. My first question is, is there anything I can do about this. Second question, let’s say that the developers continue to not respond, is there any protection here for home owners or are they simply stuck unable to sell their home just because the developer has no reason to/simply cannot be bothered to respond?

I totally understand the rights that they have as developers. But aren’t these rights stripped if they decide not to cooperate? As mentioned, without them responding people cant sell their home!

Thanks for any advice.

eddddy

Is your property leasehold or freehold?

How hard has your solicitor tried to contact the 'right people' about this? (Some fixed fee / budget solicitors might not do too much digging / investigation.)

For example, does the Deed of Covenant relate to paying service charges / management charges? If so, do you get bills for those? Who sends the bills?

The people sending the bills would probably be the freeholder's agent, so they would be the people to contact.


It might be worth you doing things like...

• phoning the developers and/or their agents to see if you can find out more
• asking people who have recently bought property in the development how they dealt with this
• asking your estate agent if they have any knowledge of how other sellers on the development dealt with this
• etc

(Your solicitor won't be doing that kind of detective work.)

Troy_af

eddddy said:

Is your property leasehold or freehold?

How hard has your solicitor tried to contact the 'right people' about this? (Some fixed fee / budget solicitors might not do too much digging / investigation.)

For example, does the Deed of Covenant relate to paying service charges / management charges? If so, do you get bills for those? Who sends the bills?

The people sending the bills would probably be the freeholder's agent, so they would be the people to contact.


It might be worth you doing things like...

• phoning the developers and/or their agents to see if you can find out more
• asking people who have recently bought property in the development how they dealt with this
• asking your estate agent if they have any knowledge of how other sellers on the development dealt with this
• etc

(Your solicitor won't be doing that kind of detective work.)

The property is freehold. I have no idea how hard my solicitor is trying to get a response. This is the one thing that is seriously starting to get me down now with the whole conveyancing process. I genuinely feel as if I am my own solicitors supervisor, constantly checking all of their actions and actually chasing them up to make sure that they are actually doing their job.

My solicitors operate on a no sale no fee basis. So if they aren’t doing any of this detective work then they risk losing the sale and as a result, their fee!

Any way.. the Deed of Covenant is related to the developer, not a management company. There is no management company, as the estate is adopted by the council. From the wording of the Deed it seems to just be confirmation from myself that I have not breached any of the restrictive covenants contained in the transfer deed.

They also need a certificate of compliance, which needs to be drawn up by the developers solicitors. Who, as previously mentioned, just don’t feel like getting involved at all I suppose.

I will be working away soon, without phone or internet access. As a result, I will not be able to carry out any of the ‘detective’ work myself. Thanks for the help.

Brie

They also need a certificate of compliance, which needs to be drawn up by the developers solicitors. Who, as previously mentioned, just don’t feel like getting involved at all I suppose.

I suspect the developer's solicitors aren't acting because they are not being paid to do so.  So you may need to step in and agree to pay £XXX in order to progress the paperwork. 

We needed to do that with the freeholders' solicitors when selling MiL's flat.  Freeholders wouldn't agree to anything and solicitors were awaiting their instruction.  By instructing them ourselves the sale was able to progress.