Seller's solicitor fees when the buyer pulls out

_Sam_

Apologies in advance as this is probably a stupid question - out of curiosity (about to become a first time seller), if a buyer pulls out before the exchange is there a way for the seller not to lose their solicitor fees to date? Assuming no chain on the seller's side.

Would it be right to think that sellers are in a slightly different position from buyers, i.e. if a buyer pulls out the seller still has the same house to sell; whereas if a seller pulls out a buyer has to start everything anew with the new house.

In other words, should the buyer pull out, could the seller's solicitors just put on hold their work to date until the seller finds a new buyer, and then the seller's solicitors would just carry on from where they left it with the old buyer? At least on some things, I understand there would be some duplicate emails to be sent etc, but generally is it possible for the seller in this situation not to lose much when the buyer pulls out?

housebuyer143

If you use a no completion, no fees solicitor then you will not be charged subject to the buyer pulling out. I lost 2 buyers and so was very very grateful I chose to go with someone with this policy. 100% recommend it. 

A years work, with the entire sales process done 3 times over only cost me £1200.

Obviously_the_best

There are many solicitors that have 'No move, no fee' policies including many of the big ones like Muve, Taylor Rose and Lawcomm. Many smaller offices will charge you for any work done or that needs repeating at some of the smaller companies can't afford to swallow the costs.

p00hsticks

I had a buyer pull out of a sale - the solicitor kept me on the books while we found a new buyer but then added an additional 'abortive sale' charge to their overall fees when we finally completed on the sale.

As housebuyer143 says, going with a 'no completion no fee' conveyancer or solicitor would have prevented this, but at the time we were struggling to find any good solicitor free to take the work on at all (it was during the stamp duty holiday) and ironically it was the complete incompetance of the buyers conveyancer who I suspect had lured them in with such a promise that eventually after much delay caused them to pull out!

user1977

Bear in mind that "no move no fee" means you're paying a premium on the completed transaction (whether or not you ever got any "free" work out of it) to cover all of the abortive work which the lawyers can't charge for.

As you surmised, it's less of a problem for a sale as your solicitor isn't starting from scratch when the next buyer comes along.

Hamlet22

You pay for their time taken to date - unless they offer a no sale no fee - and when a new sale starts, you are exposed to the same quote again, so you can almost pay double. Nothing wrong with that, as you are simply paying the quote every sale attempt.

Drawingaline

Our solicitor held our file while we found a new buyer. I don't remember any additional charges, but it certainly assisted our sale to the new buyers. We had been at exchange with the first buyers (mortgage issues caused them to withdraw) so it meant our solicitor had answers to most of the enquiries at her fingertips. The sale went through in 11 weeks, two of them a Xmas shutdown, so tbh I would have been happy if we were charged a bit of a fee! 

I know if it had all fallen apart we would have had to pay for time spent.