Statute of limitation on house purchase contract?

Your case would surely be against the solicitor who investigated the title for you.

your solicitor should have looked at the contract before you signed it. You did get a solicitor to look at it before signing it? You didn't just take the receiver at their word?

the time to check encumbrances is before you sign contracts.

I see this as an expensive mistake on your part. what has your solicitor said?

I presume you've been in contact with the solicitor who did the purchase about this. What did they say about it? Dis they advise going against the seller, or suggest they had made a mistake?

Talk to your solicitor - a different solicitor. There are a couple of possible actions here; which one is the most promising from your point of view depends on all the facts, and the full terms of the contract.

Possible actions include:

• Professional negligence action against your former solicitor for not discovering/advising you about the encumbrance
• Misrepresentation action against the receiver for falsely representing that the property was free of encumbrances
• Breach of contract action against the receiver for breach of a contractual obligation to convey the property free of encumbrances.

The limitation period for all those actions is six years, but in each case running from a slightly different date.

I am not saying that any of those actions would succeed - just that they are the ones you would be looking at. There may be others that I haven't spotted for which the limitation period would be different.

Probably not, but it depends on what it says in the deed.

what undertaking to the mortgage company? There appears to be a lien on the property that the receiver and the OPs solicitor were not aware of.

The undertaking to register the property to the o/p and his mortgage company's interest in it.

The o/p said in his second post there was a mortgage company involved and his solicitor had given an undertaking to it. Subsequent to your last post the o/p has only clarified that the existing charge is a judgement mortgage which is irrelevant to the point about his solicitors unertaking.

It is a good idea to read all posts.

It wasn't a very sincere apology and only came grudgingly after you had attacked my post twice and accused me of making things up.

If this has been running for six years, that is quite some time and there may well be a sense of urgency.

I would suggest independent advice from another solicitor.

The difficulties may well be resolved in time without any great pain, but I wouldn’t be leaving that to chance.

Unless it is a commercial mortgage, the purchasers solicitor also acts for the lender by way of giving an undertaking to register the title and their interest in the property. The lender will proceed against the solicitor if the undertaking is not honoured.