Really annoyed with my solicitor

I rang my solicitor today as I just wanted to get updated information on my house sale (I am selling to a couple and we are both agreed to a closing date of June 19th). Anyway the reason I rang the solicitor is because I am starting a new job out of Dublin and I wanted to make sure there were no stumbling blocks legal or otherwise that might hold up the house sale and stop me agreeing to take the job near enough to the date of the house sale.

My solicitor proceeded to inform me that they buyers are not mortgaged approved so it could take ages for them to get approval and that I might be better putting the house on the market.

Naturally i was very stressed at this news so I got onto the estate agents handling the sale (I had been assurred by them that the buyers were mortgage approved). After I had a little rant with them they said they would check it out and get back to me.

They rang back about 30 minutes later to tell me that the buyers were indeed mortgage approved, they were however waiting from their mortgage pack from the bank and that the contracts should be signed by the end of the week. Needless to say I was very pleased with this (though I thought a mortgage pack would be something you get when you initially apply for a mortgage ie. application form etc).

Im just so annoyed with my solicitor for putting that unnesessary stress on me. Unfortunately she was gone home by the time the estate agents rang me back but I will be onto her tomorrow :mad:

Don't mean to add to your stress but if you haven't signed contracts yet the 19th of June might be a little optimistic for a closing date. The purchaser's mortgage pack is the legal documents they will have to sign with their solicitor who gives the bank an undertaking and they then give the solicitor the money which he in turn gives to your solicitor to complete the sale.
After contracts are signed it can easily take a month for the sale to complete. It is possible to do it much quicker but this is provided all parties are willing to make it happen including both parties solicitors. So keep checking with your solicitor and the estate agent to make sure things are on target

@ dazza21ie. Thanks for the reply. To be honest I dont mind if the whole thing takes longer (ie. goes into July) as I can arrange for the new job to start then. I was more annoyed with the fact that solicitor made it sound like the sale wouldnt be going through at all. She actually said to me that because they buyers were not mortgage approved that they would probably pull out.

Luckilly I am not buying a new house (going to wait for a year or so) and the buyers are renting so hopefully that will speed things up a bit.

I can't imagine why any solicitor would make something like that up, so I'd be inclined to think that she was informed by the solicitor for the purchasers that no loan offers had issued yet. Which can often mean problems if it has already been a few weeks. She was probably warning you that it could be an issue. Should she have said nothing if that was what she thought?

I cannot understand why you are annoyed with your solicitor. You do not have signed contracts - and really, in todays climate, which appears to be getting worse on a daily basis, you cannot be certain of the deal completing until the deal is actually complete and the funds are in your account. And that will not happen unless and until your purchasers get their loan approval and funds. Which has not happened yet.

I am watching deals collapsing all around me - where purchasers who were loan approved 3-6 months ago are now having their loan offers pulled or being offered a ( considerably) lesser amount. It is getting to the stage where purchasers should not sign contracts until they literally have the mortgage funds available. Whats happening therefore is that a huge amount of work is being done pre-contract so that when the loan offer does appear that closing can occur within days. Its getting to be a very harsh world out there.

mf

mf1 said:

I am watching deals collapsing all around me

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Is there some way to "lock" buyer/seller at early stage into some clause under which the one pulling out pays all fees incured to date by the other?

bacchus said:

Is there some way to "lock" buyer/seller at early stage into some clause under which the one pulling out pays all fees incured to date by the other?

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Thats what contracts are for. Its just really really tight at the moment - there are still a lot of very naive people out there - vendors and purchasers - who still think that "it will be alright" and blithely go ahead dragging others along with them and then seem slightly shocked/taken aback/defensive when it all falls apart and everyone is cross with them. Well, we didn't have signed contracts!

No-one would do a deal based on a lock-in clause - its too risky.

mf

Gazza,

I would tend to cool it a bit to be honest! From the different people involved in this transaction, there are different perspectives – the solicitor has one view of things, the purchasers another, and so on. Each probably is right to an extent and depending on their role in the process and interpretation of the facts. I would be inclined to ask the solicitor / estate agent questions to clarify positions first, then challenge the person if that is appropriate once you are fully aware of the ‘facts’ as they have been told them. If you go in all guns blazing, you could end up feeling silly.

("Mortgage approved" could mean different things to different people - for example, I considered myself to be mortgage approved (and told the selling estate agent so) when the bank told me there would be no problem getting a mortgage. I'd no paperwork done though.)

Good luck with the sale.

Whats new? Selling and buying a house is stressful and until contracts are signed it's best to beleive that it could all go pear shaped!! Especially when credit terms are being tightened all the time.

A good solicitor should make you aware of any problems they have picked up from "thier end of the story" and thats what they did.

Try and move it on quickly now, asked for an update at the end of every week? It wouldn't suprise me if they don't come back for a reduced price, from experience this is happening all the time now.

The Solicitor was informed that there was no mortgage pack and no loan, she was most likely told that they may not proceed by their solicitor. The estate agents then told you they were mortgage approved but I wouldn't believe them 100% either. There is no contract until both parties have signed. Your solicitor did nothing wrong advising there could be a problem, she is right there could be. An estate agent saying they are "on the way" isn't very comforting imo.

I agree that nothing should be taken for granted in this current market.

We applied for our mortgage and were told it would take no more than 3 working days. It took 2 and a half weeks for the banks to finally confirm they were giving us approval in principle.

When we applied for our mortgage 14 months ago for our first property (we have since sold it) they were willing to give us what we were looking for and didnt ask for half as much information as they did this time around.

14 months on we are doing a lot better for ourselves financially so it shocked us to see how strick the banks have now become.

Our approval is only valid for 3 months so we now have to ensure we find somewhere else to live.

Fortunately we waited until our sale went through and we are now currently renting until we find somewhere else to buy.

We are finding some EA's biting our hands of whereas others are willing to go for higher offers with buyers who are in chains. This really infuriates us because in a number of sales we are fully aware that the vendors are extremely anxious to sell. However, certain EA's are more concerned with getting commission imo. They arent thinking of the vendor they are representing.

Sale agreeds in the areas we are looking in are falling through all over the place.

My advice to you would be to stay in close contact with your solicitor. We didnt get the contracts on our property signed until a week before the closing date. Up until 24 hours before the closing date we werent even sure if they were going to transfer the funds.

Fortunately we have an excellent solicitor who advised to aim for the closing date so we had all our furniture removed and put into storage hours before they confirmed the funds had been transferred.

Thanks everybody for the replies. Cant say I am filled with confidence after reading some of them but I realise the property market is a totally different beast to one it was a couple of years ago.

Anyway I got back onto the estate agent today and they got onto both the buyer and the mortgage broker. The broker said that the application is been processed by the bank and that the mortgage pack should be available by the end of the week. The buyers still want to buy so thats the main thing. The broker has said he sees no reason why anything should go wrong and I know it is probably his job to say that but I have to take his word for what he is saying. The buyers were approved in principle on the first week in April so it is less than 2 months ago.

Im a little bit more in a happy place today than I was yesterday You see originally when I put the house on the market it was with a few to renting for a year and then to move outside Dublin with work. However in the last 2 weeks a great job opportunity has come up outside Dublin for a July start(no definite date in July) and I want take it.

If the sale fell through(which it wont... positive thinking) I would be heartbroken a it means in all likely hood I wouldnt be able to take the job as I would have to put the house back on the market while paying off the mortgage.. Renting might not be an option with so many properties on daft.ie at the moment.

Anyway I am sure everything will be fine. I was just annoyed with my solicitor yesterday.. I know she was probably only relaying on information but the woman is so pessimistic. Every time I ring her it is all doom and gloom with her. Thanks again for reading and replying to my post.

Hi Gazzer,

I know what its like to be in this situation. I was this way selling my house in Lucan about a year and a half ago. It was like there was a sense in the air that the property market was about to fall (it had already fallen slightly) and I was panicing that I had left it just ever so slightly too long to get out . However, it eventually went through and I am much happier having made the move.

I have read your posts on this board and another one and wish you luck in moving forward and that I hope it goes through for you.