Help, restricted covenant, title cannot be transferred

loubel

Have you asked your solicitor what's going on?

They are the people to explain the issue to you, not the estate agents. 

No need to go in all guns blazing with a complaint before you've even established what has happened. You can only complain if your solicitors have done something wrong, which it is not clear from your post is the case. You need to ask them to explain what is holding up registration and go from there.

If it does turn out that both sets of solicitors have somehow missed that the property is shared ownership then certainly raise a complaint. Do let us know how you get on.

_Penny_Dreadful

aoleks said:

the estate agent has nothing to do with it, whatever those above say, and you're not entitled to any "refund" (what refund? seller pays agent fees). also, if it comes to it, that amount will be a drop in the ocean compared to the costs you'll incur, so do not accept anything.

It’s not a refund and it’s not something anyone posting here has suggested. It’s the PRS that the OP escalated to that has said the OP should get an amount equivalent to the fees received for the sale. 

GDB2222

loubel said:

Have you asked your solicitor what's going on?

They are the people to explain the issue to you, not the estate agents. 

No need to go in all guns blazing with a complaint before you've even established what has happened. You can only complain if your solicitors have done something wrong, which it is not clear from your post is the case. You need to ask them to explain what is holding up registration and go from there.

If it does turn out that both sets of solicitors have somehow missed that the property is shared ownership then certainly raise a complaint. Do let us know how you get on.

Rightly or wrongly, the ombudsman has already ruled against the estate agent. The award made was the amount of the fee the agent received from the seller.

Now, the buyer needs to find out from his solicitor what is going on. The solicitor may well have an undertaking from the seller's solicitor to make any payments due, but it is now time to get the undertaking honoured, if necessary out of the solicitor’s own pocket.

Faddi777

Flugelhorn said:

I wouldn't rely on the estate agent to have noticed this at all  but I would have expected the solicitor to review the title and any restrictions on it 

So did the vendor sell the property to you for the market rate even though the HA owned 50% of it? presume he didn't give any of the money to the HA?

Sorry i think there is confusion when i wrote HA owns the 50% . Actually the seller cannot sell the property without the consent/ approval from HA , seller bought this property on Discount sale scheme which means she bought its at 50% less than open market price. 

Below is the extra from the email of HA service officer

"Essentially the resale procedure detailed within the legal documents has not been adhered to. In accordance we cannot provide our certificate to satisfy the Land Registry restriction, one of the procedures that has been ignored is the maximum resale price of the property which is limited to 50.08% of the Open Market Value which is determined by a RICS valuer"

I hope clarify the actual situation 

housebuyer143

Faddi777 said:

Flugelhorn said:

I wouldn't rely on the estate agent to have noticed this at all  but I would have expected the solicitor to review the title and any restrictions on it 

So did the vendor sell the property to you for the market rate even though the HA owned 50% of it? presume he didn't give any of the money to the HA?

Sorry i think there is confusion when i wrote HA owns the 50% . Actually the seller cannot sell the property without the consent/ approval from HA , seller bought this property on Discount sale scheme which means she bought its at 50% less than open market price. 

Below is the extra from the email of HA service officer

"Essentially the resale procedure detailed within the legal documents has not been adhered to. In accordance we cannot provide our certificate to satisfy the Land Registry restriction, one of the procedures that has been ignored is the maximum resale price of the property which is limited to 50.08% of the Open Market Value which is determined by a RICS valuer"

I hope clarify the actual situation 

So did you pay full price or get it discounted? I really don't see what the solution is to this tbh without the housing association agreeing to remove or update the charge. I hope your lawyer is able to resolve this for you. 
What are they saying about it at the moment? Have they any suggestions on how to move forward? 
While I understand where the HA are coming from, you legally bought the property now and refusing to do anything isn't going to help them in any way or you. Not like the old owner can go back in time and follow the process is it 🙄

Faddi777

housebuyer143 said:

Was it on a discount as in they should have sold the house to you at a discounted price? Some discounts are like this. The LA doesn't own half but legally the seller must sell it to you at the discounted rate as they got when they bought it. 

Regardless of what went wrong, the solicitor is wholly to blame. I would put in a formal complaint. You want the title updated into your name (as a bare minimum) and compensation for financial loss you have suffered. If you are not happy with the it response (and I would ask what they have been doing for the past 2 years to resolve this because they definitely know about it) escalate it to the ombudsman. 

Im not sure what would be final result of this situation, whether i would be able to keep this property or no. 
One thing for sure i would not be able to get mortgage for similar type of property since the interest rate gone up and the property of similar size and area is well over our affordability. 
How do we calculate the loss? 
Not sure about it either, i only put 5% deposit and rest were expenses. Even if we get our expenses and deposit, we are back to square one and end up renting again. Our financial situation is not same for mortgage

Faddi777

Thanks all for the feedback, 
I have been thinking to post here for a while and not finding courage to do so. Past two year has been really difficult for us. 
Never ever i thought that buying a property could be this stressful.
Wish i could have done more research before getting into this massive commitment.
I think, we were so desperate to get on property ladder that we rushed into buying it, and not noticed red flag from our solicitor approach to this matter.
I found this solicitor from online website. Conveyancing Index.
The firm is in south and we live in North. I did check the  google review and after that give instructions to this firm. It was not the cheapest on the panel of website but was midrange. It was a big mistake.
When i spoke to solicitor in this firm , he assured me that the whole process would be very easy and smooth, but once i paid him money and the process started, i have to email him to get things moving, many time i was chased by Estae agent to ask me about update as the email and response sent by seller solicitor was not answered for weeks, Which was very frustrating for all of us.
Since i found out first through Land registry office that they are awaiting our solicitor response to their query, upon asking him, he try to avoid telling me the actual problem and keep buying time by saying we are working on it, Land registry office ask for few confirmations which they in process to provide, then after few months he explained in his email that property was misrepresented by seller as seller didnt mentioned about there is some requirements seller need to fulfill before selling the property, 
I found out about restricted covenant by emailing the Housing association directly. Without HA email we were only guessing what could be the actuall catch .
I hope you get an idea about the whole situation.

So in your opinion the party who is fully responsible and accountable for this mistake is my solicitor?
Is it possible to complain about the seller misrepresenting the property?

Property redress scheme found partly there was breach in code of practice from estate agent hence they purposed decision to offer me the fee they had from seller. 

Can housing association after knowing that seller got open market price claim the money back from seller and remove restriction? Because seller is inbreach of contract not me , they should penalise seller rather than us suffering and having to go through painful process 


 

aoleks

It's a bit of a pickle, but unless the previous owner is evil and wants to cause you harm, you should be relatively safe for now. the problem is, you don't own the house, even though you paid for it. the title deed is not in your name, but the name of your previous owner, so you gave away hundreds of thousands of pounds that you pay interest on, with nothing to show for it.

having said that, the reason we have highly educated, properly experienced specialist lawyers (solicitors) to deal with this kind of transactions is the complexity of legal issues surrounding properties. you can reasonably expect your solicitor to carry out this process without making mistakes. clearly, that didn't happen and as I mentioned above, the title deed is probably the first document they check in great deal. unless you were negligent, you CAN'T miss the restrictions.

the law firm must put this right in whatever shape or form or compensate you. they have insurance for this kind of issues, they handle tens of millions (or hundreds) of people's money, I'm sure they are backed by a proper insurance company. luckily for you, they are all heavily regulated, so there should be a process, but it might be a long.

please keep us posted, I think we're all very curious how this will end.

EssexHebridean

As far as the solicitor goes - when you had the original introductory letter from them, they will have given you the details of the person handling your case, and also the "supervising partner" - the person that you can escalate to if things go wrong, or you have a problem that is not being resolved by your own case handler/conveyancer.  Time now to find that letter, and the name, and make a formal approach to that individual to ask for them to get involved in resolving things. 

housebuyer143

Regardless of what they other poster said, you do own the house as you have legally purchased it, so do not worry, the old owner can't sell it again. The problem is neither can you. You are not the owner on paper. 
I do recommend you go here and set up a property alert though so you can know if anything happens with the property title. Your solicitor should be ensuring your interest is still pending to ensure no claims etc can be listed against the title for the old owner.
https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/

The seller was probably negligent in not telling the solicitor but 100% it was your solicitor that is negligent here and who you should pursue. They are paid to check the title deeds and it would have been on there, clear as day. 

The HA have your house listed as affordable housing due to the discount scheme and it's unlikely they will just agree to remove this change because doing so takes the house out of affordable housing stock. They are unlikely to pursue the seller as the seller probably doesn't have the money just lying around to pay it. 

 I personally think compensation looks something like you getting the title registered with the 50% reduction removed or if they can't do that the solicitor refunding you half the purchase price to satisfy the HA that the condition has at least been satisfied so they are willing to agree to update the charge. You would have to sell at a 50% reduction though. 

Sorry to say, I don't think it's going to be easy and whatever happens I would expect compensation for stress and clearly financial loss due to being unable to sell, remortgage etc.