COMPLETION DATE CHANGED

geek84

Hi Folks

I bought a property recently. However, the seller changed the completion date a few times.

I had sent all the funds to my solicitor a few weeks before exchange and completion, according to the original exchange and completion dates.

Am I entitled to any interest earned on the funds which were held by my solicitor for those few weeks?

Thanks in advance

HouseMartin567

Do you mean the proposed completion date moved a few times prior to exchange? If so, no, the seller isn’t liable to pay you interest.

If you had exchanged and completion failed to occur on the set date then you could claim costs incurred. Whether loss of interest is one of those would need to be advised by your solicitor (granted, it’s your solicitor who would have benefited from the interest!).

SDLT_Geek

geek84 said:

Hi Folks

I bought a property recently. However, the seller changed the completion date a few times.

I had sent all the funds to my solicitor a few weeks before exchange and completion, according to the original exchange and completion dates.

Am I entitled to any interest earned on the funds which were held by my solicitor for those few weeks?

Thanks in advance

As one geek to another:

Whether your solicitor should account to you for interest earnt on the money held for you is a matter of their terms of business.  You should check the retainer letter and any terms and conditions.

The issue has not been high profile during the years of low interest rates, but has become topical again and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority have a news piece about it here: https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/sra-update-126-interest-rates/

Sistergold

Why will you order the money to be deposited a few weeks before the original completion date? You should normally request to get the money a few days before the completion. Note by order I mean you get to know the notice period required by the bank for you to get funds so you give them notice on x date to get money on y date and y date should be just a few days before completion. 

If the money has been kept for that long read the terms and conditions. The bank would have started charging interest. Whatever the solicitors earned as interest in their holding account will probably not be as high as the bank will be charging you. Whatever the terms say if your seller has been moving completion dates after exchange then you should be within your rights to ask for compensation of any losses due to this change. If you were too keen and was told a tentative completion date with no exchange then the only thing is to look at what the solicitors will be happy to do. 

Good luck, we live and learn hopefully it the seller will not pull out completely. 

GDB2222

SDLT_Geek said:

geek84 said:

Hi Folks

I bought a property recently. However, the seller changed the completion date a few times.

I had sent all the funds to my solicitor a few weeks before exchange and completion, according to the original exchange and completion dates.

Am I entitled to any interest earned on the funds which were held by my solicitor for those few weeks?

Thanks in advance

As one geek to another:

Whether your solicitor should account to you for interest earnt on the money held for you is a matter of their terms of business.  You should check the retainer letter and any terms and conditions.

The issue has not been high profile during the years of low interest rates, but has become topical again and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority have a news piece about it here: https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/sra-update-126-interest-rates/

There’s being fair to clients on the one hand. And, there’s creating a paper chase of calculations that clients are going to have to pay for, on the other. 

It would be helpful if the SRA came up with a rule of thumb for deciding which cases are de minimis and can be ignored. For example, they could say that there’s no need to account for interest on money held for less than a week, provided the amount is less than £1m. 

Or, maybe, it’s time for banks to provide individual client accounts, so their computers can do the number crunching.