Vendors Suing

jos_kel

Original closing for purchaser's of our old house and for us to buy vendor's house was 13 July.
County council late granting retention so our solicitor said 15th would be 'sensible'.
We were good to go on 15th, mortgage approved, ages before that.
However on drawdown our bank had some internal delay for more than a week. Also our purchaser's were waiting on their bank.
We got frustrated and sick of waiting so we cut our bank out of the loop and funded it ourselves.
Under stably the vendors were frustrated as we would be. We wrote their estate agent an email explaining where the blame lay.
They are now suing us for 2.5k, due to interest lost and rent they had to pay.
Our estate said not to worry but they have sent us a direct letter threatening to institute legal proceedings.
Our bank has apologised for their role in it. Our solicitor knows we are not to blame for it dragging on.
Does anyone know what gives here?
By the way I appreciate the vendors solicitor only has visibility of us and is blind to the goings on in the background.

athtrasna

At this stage you have to hand this over to your solicitor. Legal action has been launched, you need to respond through your legal representative. Though your post is confusing, in one place it says they are suing you and in another it says they are threatening legal action. Which is it?

Mod: With a reminder that legal advice cannot be sought or given on this forum, I'll leave the thread open for now

CreepingDeath

As far as I know the closing date is the best estimate.

I sold my house and bought another last October.
The extremely aggressive and pushy client initially wanted us to enter a contract to commit to that date, something our solicitor said was reserved for commercial sales and more common in the UK. We refused, and went with a typical residential contract in Ireland.

The vendors just have to realise ye were in a chain.
That's why a lot of residential vendors love cash or first time buyers, these delays are inevitable when you've 2 (or even more) sets of buyers all dependent on their sale going through first, plus their financial institutions and solicitors all of which can introduce delays.

I don't believe there's any legal penalty clauses on standard residential contracts.
I'd imagine your solicitor would say that you fulfiled the contract by completing the sale, but the closing date was an estimate and there was no agreed penalty of missing that date.

They just have to suck it up.

jos_kel

athtrasna wrote: »

At this stage you have to hand this over to your solicitor. Legal action has been launched, you need to respond through your legal representative. Though your post is confusing, in one place it says they are suing you and in another it says they are threatening legal action. Which is it?

Mod: With a reminder that legal advice cannot be sought or given on this forum, I'll leave the thread open for now

They have not had a response from our solicitor since they contacted him a week ago. In the letter to us today they said that they will institute legal proceedings in a weeks time.
I've emailed our solicitor to see what's happening

Toots

Is it possible that they're just blowing smoke to try and get you to close without delay? Do you know for sure that the estate agent passed on the info about why there was a delay?

Marcusm

It will be interesting to see the basis on which they would base a suit especially as they completed the sale. Generally completion can only be sought/sued for until after a significant period post exchange, I recall something like 30 post agreed completion date. Suing for the costs of failed completion is unusual empty in Ireland. Suing for a delayed completion sounds almost unheard of.

GGTrek

Marcusm wrote: »

Suing for the costs of failed completion is unusual empty in Ireland. Suing for a delayed completion sounds almost unheard of.

I remember very well my solicitor sending a 28 days notice letter to vendors solicitor after delayed completion. After receiving this letter they stopped messing around and stuck religiously to the notice letter deadline since the penalty for failing to complete after exchange of contracts is very large. Again signing a contract with the assistance of a solicitor is a very serious commitment and dates are part of that commitment, why do some Irish people seem to think that dates are flexible and no costs should be incurred by failing to commit to dates. Again broken Irish legal culture, customs and system allow this to go on. I remember that when purchaser delayed money wiring by just one day in the UK he had to pay more than 200gbp of penalty to myself. If the op bank messed up then the op should countersue the bank for his loss due to delay.

jos_kel

Toots wrote: »

Is it possible that they're just blowing smoke to try and get you to close without delay? Do you know for sure that the estate agent passed on the info about why there was a delay?

Sorry maybe I wasn't cleat. Sale closed on 26th July.

jos_kel

GGTrek wrote: »

I remember very well my solicitor sending a 28 days notice letter to vendors solicitor after delayed completion. After receiving this letter they stopped messing around and stuck religiously to the notice letter deadline since the penalty for failing to complete after exchange of contracts is very large. Again signing a contract with the assistance of a solicitor is a very serious commitment and dates are part of that commitment, why do some Irish people seem to think that dates are flexible and no costs should be incurred by failing to commit to dates. Again broken Irish legal culture, customs and system allow this to go on. I remember that when purchaser delayed money wiring by just one day in the UK he had to pay more than 200gbp of penalty to myself. If the op bank messed up then the op should countersue the bank for his loss due to delay.

Couldn't agree more, the ineptitude I've witnessed from both banks and solicitors has been staggering and seems to be the "ah sure it'll be grand" culture.
I hope the vendors get their 2.5k but from the real culprits.

bleary

I can't see any basis for them to receive costs. at one stage though werent you trying to get costs from the vendors for changes to moving dates.did you actually ask or threaten that? Is this in retaliation for that request

jos_kel

bleary wrote: »

I can't see any basis for them to receive costs. at one stage though werent you trying to get costs from the vendors for changes to moving dates.did you actually ask or threaten that? Is this in retaliation for that request

No totally unrelated.
In any case it was delay by our bank that was causing closing date to be a moving target. I gave both my solicitor and my bank a 2 week 'heads-up' on this prior to closing date. Bear in mind we were mortgage approved ages before that.
It was some internal issue in the bank re: drawdown.
We were left footing the extra removal bill as a result.
The vendors were left with their financial issues too, I can empathise with them.
Banks and solicitors appear to be very laissez-faire re: closing dates and the impact of missing it.
Even my solicitor said, "these things happen".
In my profession, we always do a dry-run a week in advance before the go-live date to mitigate risks.
I know it's a different profession but the concept is the same.

maximum12

The reason they're writing to you directly is they're angry and their own solicitor told them they're wasting their time trying to pursue this. I'd just ignore it and not engage with them.

TheDoc

Blowing smoke.

You'd be able to get a simple letter from the bank outlining the delay with an internal process/system that would strike this out anyway. Wouldn't worry about, they are just pissed.

IRAC War

jos_kel wrote: »

In my profession, we always do a dry-run a week in advance before the go-live date to mitigate risks.
I know it's a different profession but the concept is the same.

You can't 'dry run' the closing of a conveyance. Final searches are literally done the night before or the morning of. You'd be mighty unimpressed if the CoCo had decided to run a motorway through the middle of your house 72 hours before closing and the solicitor had done the searches three weeks ago.

Funds transfers can also run into issues. I literally had the bank catch fire on me during the purchase of my first place!

OP this is not legal advice but suing over €2,500? I doubt it. The costs would be prohibitive. Be guided by your solicitor but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.