Lease extension price increased at the 11th hour.

simopco

Hello,
My first post here.

I recently had to sell my sister's flat as she has Alzheimers and is having to pay £1900 per week for her care, I am a named attorney on her financial LPA.

She owned 60% of the property which she purchased from a housing association and obviously paid rent on the remaining 40%.

Had to jump through hoops to keep the housing association happy and they got to market it on there own website initially.

After a few short weeks with zero communication I asked if there had been any interest and was then told that the flat would be very difficult to sell as it only had 68 years left on the lease, something I felt they could have told me from the off and not wasted both of our time.

The HA then released the flat to be sold 100% on the open market and I was then advised by my estate agent that a lease extension was the way to go.

Made all relevant enquiries with the HA who owns the freehold and was given a price of £13,885 for a 990 year lease. From my research this sounded like a pretty good deal so I accepted and signed relevant contract.

Luckily the flat was snapped up by an employee of the estate agent within days so everthing was looking good.

We exchanged and was given the completion date of 01/05.

At around 3pm of 01/05 I received a phone call from my solicitor informing me that the housing association had messed up their numbers and that the completion was going to have to be delayed for a day.
I had been sent a completion statement that I'd only given a cursory glance assuming professionals would do a professional job, silly me.

The following day I was contacted again by my solicitor to say that completion had occurred and I should get the funds minus all fees the same day.

This indeed happend but I was immediately struck by what I felt was an amount that was 'light'.
I gave the new ammended completion statement a more thorough read and was stunned that the lease extension cost was now quoted as £38.411, over 24k more than I was initially quoted.

I have contacted both my solicitor and HA about this and been told that the HA made a mistake with the initial quote.
They apparently, according to my solicitor, contacted them on the day of completion with the new fee and the solicitors accepted on my behalf without actually letting me know of the situation.

My solicitor is saying I need to deal with the HA about this not them.

Obviously I am not very happy about this to say the least.

Wondering whether anybody would have any advice as to how I proceed or indeed if I have any rights to.

Many Thanks

loubel

Raise a complaint against your solicitor. They shouldn't have agreed the new premium without your consent and they shouldn't have exchanged on your sale without a binding undertaking from the HA's solicitors to complete the lease extension on the agreed terms.

simopco

loubel said:

Raise a complaint against your solicitor. They shouldn't have agreed the new premium without your consent and they shouldn't have exchanged on your sale without a binding undertaking from the HA's solicitors to complete the lease extension on the agreed terms.

Thanks for the reply.

Having spoken to a client with experience today he agrees with your sentiment.
He also said that neither the HA or Solicitor will engage with me going forward without a formal complaint.
The conveyancing solicitor who also dealt with the lease extension was one of three actually suggested by the HA my cynical tendencies are doing somersaults!