buying first house, but seller is messing us around. what now?

vibe666

we found a house, got a mortgage and arranged everything to get moved in.

the house is 4 years old and the people living in it have been pushing us from the start to close asap, and we've done our damnedest to get it done for them as quickly as possible.

we were supposed to move in on Fri the 10th Feb, but after i'd taken the day off work (unpaid) to ensure that all the paperwork was completed and returned to the bank, the solicitor recieved copies of their signed contracts and without telling anyone they had changed the dates to wed the 15th (tomorrow). we protested as much as we could because we had everythign arranged and also had made other plans for the time they wanted to change the completion to, but they wouldn't budge, so we had to re-arrange everything, including getting an extra week in our current apartment and a lot of other messing to get everything ready for tomorrow.

now, about an hour ago, we got a message from our solicitor that they aren't ready to move tomorrow at all ow. not even an alternative date or anything. WTF!

so now, after everything we've done (twice) to make this happen, and all because they were pushing from the start to rush things through, they're messing us around again and at lunchtime today after our solicitor has been pushing their solicitor all week to confirm a time for the hand over they've come back and said they aren't ready to move tomorrow.

nothing else, not so much as an alternative time or date, nothing, just not tomorrow. so again, WTF!

as far as i can see we've both signed the contracts confirming tomorrow is the date of the move and I can't see how (legally) they can just decide now after its signed just change their mind.

I don't think our solicitor will push things too hard either, but we're going to be out on the street if we don't get this done tomorrow.

my g/f called the CAB and they've said that legally if contracts are signed the other couple is obliged to move or they will be in breach, but what does that mean for us?

someone here at work mentioned something about a clause if there are delays that it will cost them money, but the solicitor says that there's nothing in the contract like that.

can we force them out? are we entitled to some sort of compensation?

where do we go from here? we have everything arranged, furniture coming and the landlord wants his apartment back.

i think i'm going mad ted.

Sponge Bob

Did their legal muppet contact your legal muppet to arrange a CLOSING DATE , in writing, was it agreed between the legal muppets and when ?!?

did your legal muppet understand the meaning of CLOSING DATE and did they explain CLOSING DATE to you. ????

vibe666

yep, legal muppets did all that.

this is what really gets on my tits. their legal muppets (hitherto referred to as LM's) sent out contracts to our LM and the date for closing was the 10th of feb. we signed those papers and sent them back to their LM's, taking great pains to ensure that everything was in place for the 10th feb.

on the 6th feb, their LM's finally sent back copies of fully signed contracts, but had changed the closing date (without telling us) to the 15th of Feb, giving us 4 days to re-arrange everything from friday to the following wednesday, and when questioned out it wouldn't budge despite our strongest objections, and the solicitor said that there wasn't anything we could do unless we wanted to pull out. we signed contracts to say we wanted to buy on a certain date, but them changing it before signing just meant yes they would sell it to us, but they wanted to do it on the other date and that was that, end of story.

now they're saying they're not ready to move tomorrow, but as far as I can see, the closing date is tomorrow, they agreed to it, they signed a legally binding contract, end of story.

update: spoke to solicitor again, and it seems like their excuse is that their new house isn't going to be ready for another week to ten days, but lunch time on the day before the closing date is hardly the right time to bring that sort of thing up IMHO!

again, broken record from the solicitor, aside from backing out altogether there's nothing we can do. I'm seriously having trouble believing that though. if they can just do that then what's the point of having contracts at all if they aren't legally bound by them???

what can we do? is our legal muppet talking sh1te?

surely if they have signed contracts agreeing to a closing date they have to stick to it. what happens ten days if they turn round and say "oh sorry, it's going to be another week"? or a month? or 6 months?

christ, this is doing my nut in.

grumpytrousers

Can you recall if there was an interest rate mentioned on the contract? AFAIK if you have a closing date, and an interest rate, than there is effectively a penalty clause that can work. Not sure how often it actually happens in practise, and to be honest, it tends to be there for the protection of the vendor when the purchaser is dragging heels finding the money...

Still, worth having a word with your LM to see if sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Best of luck either way...

vibe666

thanks grumpytrousers, something to ask our LM about anyway.

grumpytrousers

not a bother. Vibe,

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but to be honest, the whole conveyancing thing is pretty much stacked in the vendors favour. They get to draw up the contract. They get to nominate closing date. It's THEIR preparation of closing documentation that governs date of sale/no sale, while on t'other side of the fence, you poor bastards have jumped thru every hoop which the bank and the other side put your way and you STILL have nowt to show for it.

I would suggest that, for what it's worth, you point this out to your LM. As you're paying for a service he might be willing to grow a cock and balls and give the other side a bit of guff about the hassle that they're causing you...

Victor

Demand that your solicitor enforce the contract and tell him to notify the vendor that you will be seeking reimbursement of your additional costs, loss of income .....

hitherto referred to as LM's

Hereinafter referred to as LM's.

grumpytrousers

grumpytrousers wrote:

Can you recall if there was an interest rate mentioned on the contract? AFAIK if you have a closing date, and an interest rate, than there is effectively a penalty clause that can work. Not sure how often it actually happens in practise, and to be honest, it tends to be there for the protection of the vendor when the purchaser is dragging heels finding the money...

Only of use against a Purchaser who delays.

The only remedy against a Vendor who delays is (i) specific performance or (ii) threaten to sue for losses afterwards, but the costs of this will be prohibitive and it really is a non-runner. The Vendor could get every Solicitor in the country as a witness and they will confirm that, unless time is made of the essence in the contracts, the practice of closing is often not an exact science and it can often go a few days over. Check with your Solicitor whether he made time of the essence - in fairness to him he would not have done so unless you made absolutely clear that closing now was not merely desirable but absolutely imperative.

The one chink of light is that the Law Society require that all changes to contracts be agreed before insertion. The Solicitor for the Purchaser should not have taken it on himself to insert that change unless it was signalled to your Solicitor. Dunno how much leverage this will give, but the practice is that serious changes shouldn't be simply inserted unilaterally.

LeperKing

Perhaps you could charge them rent from the agreed closing date. ( At least mention the idea to your LM) Otherwise who knows when the house is ready.

LK

vibe666

i can't help but feel that if there's nothing we can do then what was the point in signing contracts in the first place?

any othewr contract you sign for any kind of deal is legally binding on the date written on the contract, so if this isn't the case with this then why bother with them at all?

we're going to call the law society in the morning and see where we stand, but christ knows what we're going to do.

also, we've found out that our solicitors and their may be different brances of the same firm, and we're not even sure if that's legal. what (if anything) are the consequences for this whole thing if this turns out to be the case?

just thinking about it now, and the cheque is sitting in the solicitors office for the sale (280k). what are the chances of getting it made out to cash and buggering off somewhere with it? it's our money (well the banks, technically, but we've borrowed it off them) until we give itt o them for the house, so it might well be better spent on buying a nice yacht and sailing round the world or something.

Sponge Bob

Victor wrote:

Demand that your solicitor enforce the contract and tell him to notify the vendor that you will be seeking reimbursement of your additional costs, loss of income .....

Hereinafter referred to as LM's.

Exactly , both LM's agreed a date in writing and that is the closing date , it is correct as stated above that the date is controlled by the vendor thru their LM but once both LM's have signed off on it then you are entitled to costs incurred because the vendor did not move out on the agreed date.

Tell your LM to send them a bill.

Gurgle

vibe666 wrote:

we were supposed to move in on Fri the 10th Feb, but after i'd taken the day off work (unpaid) to ensure that all the paperwork was completed and returned to the bank, the solicitor recieved copies of their signed contracts and without telling anyone they had changed the dates to wed the 15th (tomorrow).

Contracts are signed with effect from Wed 15th?
Check is handed over to their solicitor?

Its your house, call the baliffs.

vibe666

vibe666 wrote:

any othewr contract you sign for any kind of deal is legally binding on the date written on the contract, so if this isn't the case with this then why bother with them at all?

Well they were entitled to change the date to the 15th (though it should have been agreed), but they should not exceed that date then. Again though, if time is not made 'of the essence', then there's not a whole lot that can be done. The first question in any case would be, if the date was so important, why didn't you make time of the essence? I mean, contracts for billions of euros have been known to drag a few days or weeks past the closing date It's only if the Purchaser sets out that the closing date is not just a desired goal but fundamental to the deal that it really becomes relevant. The practice is that every day purchases go past the closing date without consequence, unless it was clearly signalled by you in the contracts then you won't get much joy in the courts.

vibe666 wrote:

also, we've found out that our solicitors and their may be different brances of the same firm, and we're not even sure if that's legal. what (if anything) are the consequences for this whole thing if this turns out to be the case?

Very wrong in the case of new houses, and there is a Solicitor's Regulation about it, but perfectly legit where it's a second hand house.

Gurgle

Gurgle wrote:

Contracts are signed with effect from Wed 15th?
Check is handed over to their solicitor?

Its your house, call the baliffs.

Complete and utter fantasy I'm afraid. Waste of a phone call, and your time, as well as the bailiffs.

How can it be his house when the transfer is evidently not yet signed, and the Vendor doesn't even have the funds?

Getting into a time machine and undoing time is a more realistic proposal.

Peace

Gurgle wrote:

Contracts are signed with effect from Wed 15th?
Check is handed over to their solicitor?

Its your house, call the baliffs.

lol, very good!

Vibe, your LM shbould be working for you. He/she should be forthcoming with advice on how to hurry these people up on closing the sale.

I know my solicitor did mention some stuff with regards to delays and closing dates but i was because i asked about what penalties we could enfoce if they delayed closing.

NotInventedHere

you could move in to a hotel or ahostel for a month or alternatively stay
with your parents. Chill out you will have you house for long enough.

vibe666

NotInventedHere wrote:

you could move in to a hotel or ahostel for a month or alternatively stay
with your parents. Chill out you will have you house for long enough.

hello? earth to NotInventedHere. is there anyone home?

yeah, sure a hostel that sounds like it'll be fun. actually why don't we just pitch a tent in the middle of stephen's green? :rolleyes:

seriously, I just found out that we've been paying the mortgage since last Friday when the cheque was issued, we're paying rent on the apartment we're still in because of the delay. we changed our holiday days last week when they changed the closing date without informing anyone and now we've both had to take those days off (today through to tuesday) because temp cover has been arranged for both of us, and I don't get paid for my holidays so it's costing me €200 a day for the next 5 days that I'm off work.

we're waiting to hear back from our landlord to see if we can stay an extra couple of weeks, but it doesn't look like we can, which means we'll have to move out of our apartment and find somewhere to stay as well as arranging storage for all our stuff, which is going to be about €500 to get it put into storage and €40 per week after that to keep it there.

so no, I'm not going to chill out. these people keep changing their story every time they delay things so they've been lying to us from the start. if they'd contacted us when they found out there would be a delay then we could have made arrangements, but if it hadn't been for us hounding people we'd be sitting on their doorstep now with a van full of stuff.

we found out (the second time) less than 24 hours before we were due to move in and it looks like they've known for some time, and have been making excuses to delay things so we're just not willing to budge any more. we bent over backwards (at a fair bit of extra expense) to get this done in a hurry because THEY wanted it done quickly and they've just been playing us all along.

Ive just spoken to a very nice lady at the CAB and she tells us that we're entitled to compensation if its gone past the closing date so we're just working that out now to go to the solicitor with. she's told us thatif he doesn't push them to do something about it that we should make a complaint to the law society about him and get a new solicitor.

she actually laughed like a muskateer when i told her our solicitor had told us there was nothing we could do. incidentally, she's a solicitor herself who volunteers at the CAB and she's offered to help us as much as she can, to the pojnt where she gave us her private (non-CAB) number in case we needed to call her again and she's not at the CAB.

nice lady anyway, so we have some ammunition now, and we're going to act on it.

samo

Hope it gets sorted out for you Vibe, know how stressful it is when this type of thing goes wrong.

When we were buying our second house, the couple wanted a couple of extra days to stay in the house so they could move at the weekend. At the time sounded fair enough to me but solictor nearly had a heart attack when I mentioned it to him as he said it can lead to precisely the situation you find yourself in. He insisted the house was vacant and emptied (and all keys handed to the EA) before the loan cheque would be paid over to their solictor and he actually insisted that the estate agent confirm this to him before he would arrange for it to sent!

If your paying the mortgage on the house, then you legally own it and they are effectivly squatting as I understand it and it does sound like your solictor has been pretty slack on this one. Hope you get it sorted and soon.

vibe666

jesus it gets worse!

spoke to the solicitor again, and he's comepletely changed his tune now. I said to him the whole thing of "what's the point of signing a contract if it can't be enforced" to which he comes out and says that he doesn't have signed copies of the contracts from the vendor or any signed paperwork from them confirming dates. now bear in mind that this is the complete opposite to what he told us last week when they changed the dates from the 10th to the 15th. last week he told us that he was looking through the paperwork he'd had back from the vendors solicitor and that they'd changed the dates for completion from the 10th to the 15th, but now he's saying he hasn't had any documents back from them at all and that there's nothing we can do and that we don't have a leg to stand on legally.

this is starting to look very much like some sort of a put up job and that our own solicitor is trying to shaft us.

i'm not sure how much i mentioned previously, but it looks like the owner of our solicitor is the brother of the owner of the vendors solicitor. we actually looked through our own paperwork from our solicitor and the sister is actually listed as a consultant on our solicitors headed paper as well as her office being listed as another office of the same solicitors.

we rang the vendors solicitor anonymously and said we'd had family dealings with the other branch and asked about the relationship between the two, and she said they were brother and sister, buy seperate practices and that neither had any knowledge of each others cases etc. etc. totally seperate, blah blah blah.

basically it looks like our solicitor has given us bad advice and quite probably lied to us and left us up spit creek without a paddle.

we've spoken again to the lady from the CAB and we've managed to get an emergency consultation with them for 8pm tonight to go over everything with them and see where we stand legally. we might well end up having to change solicitors and make an official complaint to the law society against our own solicitor.

how's that for a fun day!

Chestylarue

Vibe

That is terrible. Buying a house is stressful enough without your own solicitor making things worse. The lady from the CAB sounds very helpful and I hope she can help your sort all of this out. I would ask her if you could take legal action against your own solicitor for giving you false information and maybe you can claim the extra expenses from them.

As for the two solicitors being related there must be a conflict of interest there as they are dealing with the same case so they will be discussing it.

Best of luck this evening.

grumpytrousers

vibe666 wrote:

jesus it gets worse!

spoke to the solicitor again, and he's comepletely changed his tune now. I said to him the whole thing of "what's the point of signing a contract if it can't be enforced" to which he comes out and says that he doesn't have signed copies of the contracts from the vendor or any signed paperwork from them confirming dates. now bear in mind that this is the complete opposite to what he told us last week when they changed the dates from the 10th to the 15th. last week he told us that he was looking through the paperwork he'd had back from the vendors solicitor and that they'd changed the dates for completion from the 10th to the 15th, but now he's saying he hasn't had any documents back from them at all and that there's nothing we can do and that we don't have a leg to stand on legally.

this is starting to look very much like some sort of a put up job and that our own solicitor is trying to shaft us.

i'm not sure how much i mentioned previously, but it looks like the owner of our solicitor is the brother of the owner of the vendors solicitor. we actually looked through our own paperwork from our solicitor and the sister is actually listed as a consultant on our solicitors headed paper as well as her office being listed as another office of the same solicitors.

we rang the vendors solicitor anonymously and said we'd had family dealings with the other branch and asked about the relationship between the two, and she said they were brother and sister, buy seperate practices and that neither had any knowledge of each others cases etc. etc. totally seperate, blah blah blah.

basically it looks like our solicitor has given us bad advice and quite probably lied to us and left us up spit creek without a paddle.

we've spoken again to the lady from the CAB and we've managed to get an emergency consultation with them for 8pm tonight to go over everything with them and see where we stand legally. we might well end up having to change solicitors and make an official complaint to the law society against our own solicitor.

how's that for a fun day!

you had a frigger of a day by the sounds of things...aye, your pal from the CAB may be able to help you, but certainly you should keep a 'diary' from this point on (and even put together one for as far back as you can remember) and take that to the law Society. Bear in mind that none of this bringing a complaint will make your move any quicker, so you might want to run past your CAB pal the notion of getting your arse into the house first (whenever that is) and THEN sticking him for the money for inconvenience.

In other words, if he knows that you've made a complaint, neither him nor his partner in crime will be in too much of a hurry to move things on.

AFAIK there's nothing wrong, per se, with brother and brother being on opposite sides of transactions; the idea would be that as long as they're in different practises, there's no conflict, and besides, there's an assumption that all clients are dealt with 'at arms length' so that there should be no 'favourites'. In other words, while i've no doubt that your solicitor and his opposite number are conniving shysters, you'll be hard pushed to prove it...

best of luck, mate...

vibe666

the solicitor we're dealing with is actually a partner in the firm, but it's the main guy that is the brother of the woman who owns the other practice.

the fact that the paperwork we have from our guy has their own address AND the vendors solicitors address (in really small print we nevber noticed before) as well as naming her as a consultant for our solicitor is the thing that's set off alarm bells for us, but we only found out all this after ringing them anonymously and checking with the receptionist what the relationship was between the two.

anyway the woman on the phone at the CAB and the people we just saw tonight both saifd that there's a definite conflict of interests between the two firms dealing with both sides of the transaction.

what they advised tonight was the following to be done first thing.

1. we need to see a copy of the contracts we signed to prove one way or the other that the vendor did or didn't sign them and take it from there.

2. if they're signed by both parties, and thinking back our solicitor has told us on 3 occasions they WERE signed before he changed his mind today, which makes me think even more that it was a knee jerk reaction at me pushing him to do something and that he's trying to cover something up. but anyway, if both parties have signed then we need to get him to issue a 28 day notice of completion which is seemingly a concrete thing that means they have to leave the house whatever happens in 28 days, so even if everything else goes pear shaped they have to leave 28 days after the notice is served, so the house will be ours from that date regardless of whether they want to move out or not.

we also need to get him to return the cheque for the mortgage to the bank immediately cos right now it's sitting in his bank earning him interest while we pay for it.

if the contracts aren't signed then we need to find out from him what the hell he was doing getting a mortgage cheque issued on a house we don't have contracts for and aren't entitled to a mortgage for (if they aren't signed) and exactly how hard he wants me to kick him in the nuts for acting like such a bollox.

Berns

Personally i'd pull out. I'm tryin to move atm & buyer pulled out before christmas, but i'm gettin another 11k now after bidders so not too bad. Prob is house wanted fell through too & next best one lookin is 15k dearer

They've screwed you over so screw em over. If they are buyin the house from the sale of their own & sale falls through, then let them see how it feels.


Good luck anyhow whatever ya decide to do.

Gurgle

vibe666 wrote:

if they're signed by both parties, and thinking back our solicitor has told us on 3 occasions they WERE signed before he changed his mind today

AFAIK, Your bank shouldn't have issued the check until they got their copy of the signed contract. If the contracts aren't signed then you've taken out a mortgage on a property you don't own.
Unfortunately the best advice I can give is grit your teeth and wait for your LM to sort it out. It'll probably cost you thousands. Pulling out now will cost you more and leave you with nothing.

Keep carefull note of everything and what it costs you and deduct it from your solicitor's bill when it arrives. Let him take you to the small claims court if he thinks he can justify his actions.

Gurgle

Gurgle wrote:

AFAIK, Your bank shouldn't have issued the check until they got their copy of the signed contract. If the contracts aren't signed then you've taken out a mortgage on a property you don't own.

Huh?

The bank issue the cheque when the Solicitor requests it. They rarely look for the contract (only in large commercial transactions where the mortgage paopers are drafted by their own Solicitor or a three way closing is proposed) and certainly will never make the decision as to when to issue funds. So they have no liability whatsoever.

Furthermore, in purchases, mortgages always issue when the property is not owned by the Purchaser. They need the money in advance of closing. Solicitor should not have requested it without signed contracts though.

Gurgle

Deleted User wrote:

Furthermore, in purchases, mortgages always issue when the property is not owned by the Purchaser. They need the money in advance of closing. Solicitor should not have requested it without signed contracts though.

Contracts signed -> Bank issues check -> Check handed over -> Buyer takes possesion (closing)

No?

Sponge Bob

depends, solicitors give undertakings to bank based on undertakings from other solicitors and yadda yadda .

therefore contracts signed and on way so solicitor draws down money to save time.

Sponge Bob

vibe666 wrote:

2. if they're signed by both parties, and thinking back our solicitor has told us on 3 occasions they WERE signed before he changed his mind today, which makes me think even more that it was a knee jerk reaction at me pushing him to do something and that he's trying to cover something up.

Thats an undertaking from the LM to you then.

Talk to the CAB again, there is a conflict of interest between the vendors and your solicitors that affects your LM's ability to represent you properly.

vibe666

well, yet mopre developments, and it's starting to look like the secret handshake gang are getting in on the act to protect their own.

the g/f got a voicemail from our LM asking her to call him as soon as possible, and this was at 8:40am this morning, so he's obviously been in early.

anyway, i called him back and recorded the conversation with my phone for my own records. i know it's not admissible in any legal action as he wasn't informed it was being recorded, but i have it there for reference now anyway.

okay, so he apologised and said there had been am mjix up yesterday and that they DID have signed contracts from the vendor, so not to worry about that.

he also offered us a solution which was EXCATLY what the CAB told us to ask for last night, almost word for word in fact, which makes me very suspicious considering from day one of the problems he's been telling us there's nothing we can do to hurry things along.

he offered to issue a 28 day completion notice to the vendor (without me asking) and offered to send the cheque back to the bank (again with no prompting from me), as well as giving a full explanation of the reasons behind everything happenign the way it did, being careful not to tar and feather himself in the process.

there was someone else in his office that he kept talking to with the phone covered, but i could hear there was someone else there giving him directions.

the interesting thing is how the CAB guy (also a volunteer solicitor, like the lady i spoke to on the phone) reacted when he saw the headed paper from the solicitor. after he had said that there was a definite conflict of interests between the firms, he said that he knew the firm and that they were reputable, and that he didn't think the owner of the practice would stand for this sort of thing, and that it shouldn't be too hard to get it all fixed. he told us what to ask for and we left, but him mentioning that he knew them and then us getting a call so early in the mornign from them without us having to call them and ask for a callback is odd in itself.

every single time we've called their office before now, without fail they've made an excuse as to why they can't put me through (after asking who it is) and taken details for them to call me back. the onylt ime i got straight through to them was the first time when they didn't know who i was!

whe I get home I might well stick the audio file into cool edit and see if i can pick up what was being said n the background on the tape, but he was being prompted by someone, it was definately not his secretary because of what he was saying to me after conferring, so I'm leaning towards thinking that the guy from the CAB knows them better than he let on, and that he tipped them off this morning which allowed them to get organised and realise that they were backed into a corner.

it's like the three guys shipwrecked on a raft in the middle of the ocean who see an island, but are drifting away from it. one says he will get in the water and paddle to shore, but as soon as he's in the water sharks start circling and nipping at him, so he has to get back in the boat.

same thing happens to the second guy when he tries, but the third guy says let me try, I'm a lawyer. he gets in and immediately the sharks come round him, but instead of biting him, they all line up and push at his feet like dolphins until they are all safely at the shore line.

the other two look at the 3rd guy in disbelief for a while before one of them asks why the sharks acted like that. to which the lawyer replies simply "professional courtesy".

anyway, he's returning the cheque to the bank, issuing a 28 day completion order and requesting compensation for loss of earnings and inconvenience caused. whether we get that last bit depends on how pushy he's going to be with the vendors solicitor (his boss's sister) and whether or not there has been behiond the scenes collusion going on.

interesting stuff anyways, I'll keep the thread updated as soon as i know more.

Gurgle

Gurgle wrote:

Contracts signed -> Bank issues check -> Check handed over -> Buyer takes possesion (closing)

No?

Close, but the banks have no idea usually when the contracts are signed. They act on the cheque requisition from the Solicitor. But of course the Solicitor should have signed contracts or at least be very sure of the position before requesting the cheque.

So it's:-

Contracts signed -> Solicitor requests cheque from Bank -> Bank issues check -> Check handed over -> Buyer takes possesion (closing)

bullrunner

VIBE...little tip for next time...

if they are d*cking you around..tell them to keep to the agreement or you will pull out...nobody wants to lose a sale coz of something like that.

sounds to me like the vendor wanted not to have the hassle/expense/inconvenience of putting stuff into storage etc , their solicitor prob reckoned that they could get away with this cr*p coz ur a first time buyer (and dont know what you are doing)

but fair play to ya for seeking independent advice and (ultimately) getting what you should have gotten in the first place!