At my wits end –
We’re supposedly buying a house, except the seller’s solicitor turns out to be useless and utterly incapable of understanding that if he doesn’t obtain the house deeds from the lender and prove that they own it (it’s a probate, seller doesn’t personally have a copy) then the sale can’t progress.
He was asked to get originals back in January, still no sign and when questioned by our solicitor or estate agent his answers are evasive and don’t confirm a) whether he has actually asked for them b) when they will arrive. He’s latest excuse is that “it doesn’t matter if we can’t get them, magic insurance will solve it”. (“Magic” my addition).
Have asked my solicitor and estate agent today to ask him for either date when deeds available or details of his wonder insurance by this Friday, otherwise we’re looking for alternatives.
Have possibly tracked down the daughter who is selling via linked in & her employer via Google. Would you contact her directly prior to walking away to make sure that she is getting the full story from her PoS solicitor??? If anything it would be an opportunity to point her at the Legal Ombudsman as unfortunately I can’t complain about someone elses solicitor…

I would knock on the door if I needed to speak to them, not via some creepy online stalking session.

The seller is on the other side of the country, not in the house we are buying which was her parents, but yes I am also contemplating driving there if it helps move things forward. No other bugger in the process seems to be capable of solving this…

Ask the estate agent to contact her (the seller) and put her in the picture direct. Say that unless her solicitor produces the deeds sharpish, within a time line you specify (48hrs / end of the week etc) then you won’t progress with the sale (it get the estate agent to follow it up sharpish as they won’t get paid if the sale falls through). You don’t need to pull out of the sale over this – but don’t tell them that.

IMO solicitors are the biggest pain in the bum when it comes to house buying and extend the process exponentially – one emails the other who takes 24/48hrs to respond etc. So 6hrs worth of paper work takes months. Solicitors have no sense of urgency unless told so – IE you need to move by x date because of y. Friends have bent tge truth in the past to try to speed up the process but if you are caught in a chain over 4 or more then it’s often very difficult as you have multiple solicitors with multiple issues to solve so it takes months.

Thanks Monkeyboy. My problem is that at the moment I am not willing to be the one to walk away as there aren’t any viable alternatives on the market in that area, and I can’t threaten them if I’m not willing to carry through. Although I appreciate that the answer to that is to suck it up and shift on.

P.s. “creepy online stalking” = phoning her number, not tagging her in a picture on facebook or anything…!

You can mention it to the estate agent in a subtle way than just a blank ‘we won’t progress with out the’ . Put it in the estate agents court IE “with no deads I can’t see how we can progress with the sale?” or “this is really is an issue, can you find out from the seller if she can speed it up?”
The estate agent won’t want to loose there fee..

If you’ve had no direct contact with the seller I wouldn’t start phoning her now – just ask the agent the questions you’d ask her and state your concerns.

If it’s probate the other solicitor may be using the lack of documents as a way of gaining time while they sort out the rest of the will etc and understand what tax implications of the sale are?

Thanks Monkey, good advice.

Interesting point Wwaswas.

Also, it could be no one knows where the deeds are if there’s no mortgage on the property?

Something similar happened to some pals of mine who wanted to buy an old mill. Things just weren’t progressing so eventually they went along with another pal, a very good solicitor, to meet the seller. It then emerged that he wanted them to under-value the sale and pay him some of the price in cash because he was divorcing and the house was to be split between him and his wife.

Isn’t it all on-line and digital these days?

http://blog.landregistry.gov.uk/title-deeds/

You know the address so you could post a letter. When we bought ours the estate agent was just a very inefficient messenger. We were buyin, not selling so just bypassed them and went round to have a chat with the sellers. All very amicable negotiation around the survey.

As per Rockhopper, all deeds are kept by the land registry knowadays. They very happy to help with enquiries. I called there help line & was told that I could avoid the charge for a copy of my deed, by completing another photo ID form instead, top advisor!

We bought a probate house and as I understood it, one the seller solicitors had sent off the probate paperwork there was no way for them to know how long that was going to take to come back.

I appreciate you are saying that they have not confirmed they have sent it, but assuming they have I think there was very much a sit and wait period.

The situation we were in though was we had a holiday booked and wanted the purchase to go through after that to save paying for a holiday place, the rented house, and the house we were buying all at the same time so were hopeful this would hold things up. In this time the solicitors I think drew up drafts of everything in anticipation of the probate being granted and we did end up having to buy the place then go on holiday the next day.

I think the probate thing took about 6 weeks to 2 months to come through, on a simple one beneficiary inheritance, and once it did things then moved fast. Like I say there was no way of getting any indication of how far off the probate was once the paper work went in, I think I was told it could be another month or 2 one day, then the next it was all done.

Update – Seller’s solicitor hadn’t sent any paperwork…. The seller is fuming and is now visiting him on Friday to complete the paperwork for him, then hand deliver it to their parent’s lender to release the deeds. We at least now have a deadline with some tangible reasoning.

Date of the original sale pre-dates Land Registry’s digitization apparently, so they have no record of an owner.

I should have just squatted in it and waited this solicitor out!