Solicitor completed sale without requesting searches

user1977

The building society would only care if (a) they repossessed and (b) they suffer a shortfall because of the lack of searches. And it doesn't sound material to the value of your property.

Nobody's going to be struck off. Just complain and get some of your fees back (hopefully you at least weren't charged for the searches?) 

Blacklabfluff

Just to clear, I’m not looking at anyone being struck off and I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s career. 

But for me it’s just the lies which I can’t tolerate. It’s taken six months to admit they completed without searches despite emails to the contrary. 

We all make mistakes. But why lie?

silvercar

You should make a complaint. Follow the solicitor's internal complaints procedure and go from there. They will investigate how this happened and you can then either accept or reject their findings. No one will be out of pocket, solicitors have professional indemnity to cover them for mistakes.

In your complaint I would make both points, that the searches weren't done and that they claimed they had been done.

sheramber

Blacklabfluff said:

Just to clear, I’m not looking at anyone being struck off and I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s career. 

But for me it’s just the lies which I can’t tolerate. It’s taken six months to admit they completed without searches despite emails to the contrary. 

We all make mistakes. But why lie?

What do you want? 

martindow

To me this seems much more than an administrative problem.  If the new development makes the OP's house less desirable and thus more difficult to resell in the future this has caused a monetary loss.  

I think I would speak to the agents to get their opinion and then pay a surveyor to quantify it.  If this does turn out to be the case I would want more than getting a proportion of the conveyancing bill refunded on a goodwill basis.

user1977

martindow said:

If the new development makes the OP's house less desirable and thus more difficult to resell in the future this has caused a monetary loss.

Yes if true, but it seems very unlikely that a residential development several doors away would do so. 

GDB2222

user1977 said:

martindow said:

If the new development makes the OP's house less desirable and thus more difficult to resell in the future this has caused a monetary loss.

Yes if true, but it seems very unlikely that a residential development several doors away would do so. 

We have no idea about that, but the OP is not complaining about it. 

He is complaining about the disruption caused by the building work. Indeed, that might be why the previous owners decided to sell.  That is not a monetary loss, but it is a substantial inconvenience, and the courts are quite used to placing a value on such things. Usually not enough, in my opinion! 

The OP is not entirely sure whether he would have backed out of the purchase if he had known about this development. Or, indeed, what he would have done. Perhaps, he would have renegotiated the price. He really needs to think about that, because it would affect the level of compensation he can claim. 

Chief_of_Staffy

Blacklabfluff said:

Just to clear, I’m not looking at anyone being struck off 

That's exactly what should happen to them. Whether the initial failure was laziness or incompetence, who knows, but that was followed up by outright lies if your account is accurate. Lies to you concerning the searches and lies to your lender, who could theoretically recall the mortgage on the strength of it and force immediate repayment of the loan. So that's repeated professional negligence, breach of contract and mortgage fraud into the same bargain. 

What would they need to do to get a formal complaint lodged? Burn your house down? Seriously, unless these people are held to account the service we receive, already circling the pan especially in this industry, will continue to get worse.

GDB2222

Chief_of_Staffy said:

Blacklabfluff said:

Just to clear, I’m not looking at anyone being struck off 

That's exactly what should happen to them. Whether the initial failure was laziness or incompetence, who knows, but that was followed up by outright lies if your account is accurate. Lies to you concerning the searches and lies to your lender, who could theoretically recall the mortgage on the strength of it and force immediate repayment of the loan. So that's repeated professional negligence, breach of contract and mortgage fraud into the same bargain. 

What would they need to do to get a formal complaint lodged? Burn your house down? Seriously, unless these people are held to account the service we receive, already circling the pan especially in this industry, will continue to get worse.

The SRA is very hot on solicitor dishonesty, but we don’t know the full story. In most firms the conveyancing is not done by solicitors, and the person responsible for the transaction may have lied to the solicitor in charge of the firm, for example. 

Chief_of_Staffy

GDB2222 said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

Blacklabfluff said:

Just to clear, I’m not looking at anyone being struck off 

That's exactly what should happen to them. Whether the initial failure was laziness or incompetence, who knows, but that was followed up by outright lies if your account is accurate. Lies to you concerning the searches and lies to your lender, who could theoretically recall the mortgage on the strength of it and force immediate repayment of the loan. So that's repeated professional negligence, breach of contract and mortgage fraud into the same bargain. 

What would they need to do to get a formal complaint lodged? Burn your house down? Seriously, unless these people are held to account the service we receive, already circling the pan especially in this industry, will continue to get worse.

The SRA is very hot on solicitor dishonesty, but we don’t know the full story. In most firms the conveyancing is not done by solicitors, and the person responsible for the transaction may have lied to the solicitor in charge of the firm, for example. 

Indeed, but the solicitor is responsible for fulfilling the contract. If the work is done by an assistant or outsourced it's the solicitor's responsibility to check and validate it, not to take the word of a third party. Failing to do so is not qualitatively worse than themselves owning the task and simply not doing it. And that's before we even get to the deception part.