I'm inbetween house buying and purchase. Do the solicitors hold the proceeds from my sale?

freeflyer

Hi all, long story short.

Mine and my ex partners house has completed last week. My purchase has been delayed by 3-4 months which means i'm renting. Essentially my purchase was near the end but is on pause. 
What happens with the proceeds from my sale? Do the solicitors keep it until my new purchase is ready to complete? Can i get it back? I could do with the monthly interest that over £120k will give me. 

user1977

Ask them. It's your money. No need for them to hold the money if completion isn't imminent.

freeflyer

I will tomorrow Just wanted to know tonight.

GrumpyDil

Deff your money and if no completion imminent they should transfer it to you. 

loubel

3-4 days would make sense for the solicitors to hold onto the funds. 3-4 months it should be returned to you. Solicitors aren't banks and shouldn't hold client funds without good reason.

whizzywoo

We were in a similar position early this year.  Just ask them for the money.  You may have to pay their bank fees if any, for doing the transfer.

mlz1413

loubel said:

3-4 days would make sense for the solicitors to hold onto the funds. 3-4 months it should be returned to you. Solicitors aren't banks and shouldn't hold client funds without good reason.

I was going to say the same.

But do remember the interest needs declaring for tax. 

Also you will need to ensure you have access when you need so if you do a 90 day notice account you need to give notice straight away. 

Albermarle

mlz1413 said:

loubel said:

3-4 days would make sense for the solicitors to hold onto the funds. 3-4 months it should be returned to you. Solicitors aren't banks and shouldn't hold client funds without good reason.

I was going to say the same.

But do remember the interest needs declaring for tax. 

Also you will need to ensure you have access when you need so if you do a 90 day notice account you need to give notice straight away. 

You only normally need to declare savings interest if you are someone who fills in a self assessment return every year.
The banks/building societies report the interest gained to HMRC around about June each year for the previous tax year. So if you do not do self assessment, you do not need to report it. HMRC will use the banks figures to calculate your tax.
If by any chance your interest exceeds £10,000, then in theory you should then do a self assessment return, even if you do not do one normally. Having said that HMRC seem quite relaxed about this rule.
If you do earn a good amount of interest with multiple accounts, it is worth checking the figures in your online personal tax account, in case of any errors.

HHarry

I’m sure they’ll happily send it back to you - with a CHAPS / administration fee.

Then you may have to pay another CHAPS fee to send it to them in the future.

jimi_man

We had a five day gap between both so they were happy to hold onto the funds. But any longer and they'd have returned them. Tbf I didn't actually want to have the money - for a start what do you do with it? The limit for FCS compensation was £80k at the time (October) so we'd have had to open nine accounts to ensure it was safe which would have been a pain to withdraw it all when we had to pay for the new house. I'd rather they kept it and dealt with it personally 

Albermarle

jimi_man said:

We had a five day gap between both so they were happy to hold onto the funds. But any longer and they'd have returned them. Tbf I didn't actually want to have the money - for a start what do you do with it? The limit for FCS compensation was £80k at the time (October) so we'd have had to open nine accounts to ensure it was safe which would have been a pain to withdraw it all when we had to pay for the new house. I'd rather they kept it and dealt with it personally 

You would have been OK for 6 months with just one savings account.

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