Delay to closing date

A

Arianna

Guest
Hi, We are in the process of buying a second hand house, closing date 3rd June. On the 2nd June we phoned the agency only to find out that the handing over of the house had suddenly been delayed.
The reason for the delay is that the vendor is a couple who is divorcing, and they have now decided that they want to sort out who gets what before closing the deal.
We are very concerned as it took the vendor nearly 6 months to send us the contract to sign in the first place because of the divorce, and now we are facing another delay for the same reason, with no idea of when we'll be able to move in.
We have already paid the 10% deposit and our bank has issued a check for the remaining amount.
We are currently renting and every month of dealy is causing us to lose a considerable amount of money.
We are aware the vendor can delay for 28 days before we can sue.
What is the best course of action? Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks!
 
I think your solicitor can force the sale to go through... best to contact your solicitor to see what they say..........
 
Send the loan cheque back to the bank to stop interest accruing or make an arrangement to lodge it to the bank in an offset arrangement and serve your 28 day closing notice- not much else you can do, unfortunately.
 
your solicitor should cointact their solicitor, you charge a penelty interest if they dont close within 28 days of the agreed date on the contract, but there isnt much else you can do except that, you cant back out of the contract until the 28 days is up. hopefully the threat of the interest will encourage them to make up their minds...
 
Des said:
your solicitor should cointact their solicitor, you charge a penelty interest if they dont close within 28 days of the agreed date on the contract, but there isnt much else you can do except that, you cant back out of the contract until the 28 days is up. hopefully the threat of the interest will encourage them to make up their minds...
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you really need to lean on your solicitor to get this sorted as a similar situation happened to a friend of mine. The people she was buying from were supposedly seperated and after months of tooing and froing it turned out they werent and they changed thier mind about the house. They didnt even have the decency to tell her this as she had to contact them herself to find out
 
Des said:
....you charge a penelty interest if they dont close within 28 days of the agreed date on the contract....
Click to expand...

Correct.

But, remember that you must sue to reap the interest, a course of action that is rarely worthwhile in property transactions of the house-purchase kind.

The law is stacked massively in favour of the vendor.

D.
 
HI All, Thanks for the advice thus far, but our situation is two fold:
1) We aren't so much interested in suing for interest. After 7 months of waiting in total, we signed the contract a month ago and paid our deposit. The vendor stipulated an end date of 3 June 2005. Apparently 28 days after this date we can sue to get our deposit back, including other expenses such as solicitor's fees, furniture deposit, surveyor's fees and emotional distress (because believe me this has been the most unpleasant experience of our lives). Can this be done, because frankly we have had enough...

2) Our solicitor, to put it mildly has been very unhelpful, to the point where he hardly returns calls (the same goes for the property agent that sold us the property) and we would like to change solicitor's after 28 days. Can this be done as well? And what are the fees that in this case we would have to pay to the old and new solicitors?

Thanks
Arianna & Morne`
 
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