Reclaiming mortgage early repayment fees

sfindex

hello, I hope someone can help me, and I hope that this is in the right forum.

Recently, whilst moving home I wanted to port my mortgage over to my new house. I was aware that my solicitor had to be on my banks panel, so emailed a solicitor asking if they were on the panel. They replied saying they were, and so I instructed them. I have this in writing.

Anyway, it comes to the mortgage application interview and all was well until they asked who my solicitor was, I told them and they told me they weren’t on the panel and so the application couldn’t proceed.

At this point I was like, “okay, so I have a choice: either lose two grand in early repayment fees and pick another mortgage provider; or lose two grand in solicitors fees and find another solicitor.” I couldn’t risk starting all the solicitors stuff from scratch and risk the chain collapsing, so opted to choose another mortgage provider. I thought I was going to lose two grand either way, so might as well pick the course of action that carried the least risk.

After a while of mulling I got quite cross about this and phoned my bank to send me confirmation the solicitor wasn’t on the panel. They confirmed they weren’t (in writing) and also told me that they should have informed me I was entitled to a full refund. Had I known this, I might have made a different choice regarding whether to proceed or not. They still haven’t informed me.

I feel that the solicitor got my business through false pretences and want to demand they pay my early repayment fees. Is there a specific part of the solicitors code of conduct that they broke by not informing me of my right to a refund? Is there grounds for seeking redress through the courts regarding securing my business through false pretences? I can’t afford to just throw away two grand.

It’s particularly galling because I knew about the potential risk of my solicitor not being on the panel ahead of time and went to considerable effort to eliminate that risk before instruction. Had they been honest about not being on the panel I would have instructed a different solicitor.

Thanks for reading this far, and I appreciate any help you might be able to provide.

Yorkie1

In your client care letter, which the solicitors provided you with when you first instructed them, there will be details of how to formally complain to them. I'd start there.

eddddy

Just to clarify - did you explain the problem to your solicitor before you decided to change mortgage lender? If so, what did your solicitor say?

Assuming your solicitor really wasn't on the mortgage lender's panel, the cheapest option might have been to keep your solicitor to deal with the purchase, and hire another solicitor to deal with the mortgage.

The second solicitor's fee would probably have been much less than £2k.

So your solicitor might 'push back' on the basis that…

• You didn't mention the problem and give them the opportunity to explain and/or fix it.
• And/or the problem could have been solved for much less than £2k.

sfindex

hi, thanks for taking the time to reply. I did tell them at the time, and they just said (as they’re still saying now) that they are on the panel.

I didn’t know until reading your message that I could use different solicitors for different aspects - I thought I had to use the same one for everything. Should they have told me?

sfindex

Also, it might be worth mentioning that before instruction my conversation with them went:

Me: Are you on the panel?

Them: Yes.
Me: Could you check?

Them: We’ve checked and we are.
Me: Okay I’ll instruct you then.

I have all this in writing. So I guess you could describe this as giving them the opportunity to fix it then?