I am acting for a lovely young couple. They are buying their first home together and are very excited about it. This is the second house that they are trying to buy – the first house had a loft conversion with no consents; the usual issues had arisen around the Particulars of Sale indicating the room had been used as a bedroom even though the estate agents and the sellers claimed otherwise.
So we are now ready to exchange contracts on the house they are now buying. There had been a price reduction to cover some works needed and a revised mortgage offer was required. We (being the clients, the mortgage adviser and me) pushed the lender to issue the new mortgage offer as quickly as possible as there was a developer at the top of the chain who needed to complete on Friday just gone.
We were put under pressure by the site office with three or four phone calls a day to me to find out the position. There are three above me in the chain so I am a little bit irritated that all the estate agents and the site office thought it was acceptable to badger me, with the burden of blame falling square on mine and my client’s shoulders should the transaction fail to complete on Friday.
The new mortgage offer came through on Monday and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I had already obtained the LISA monies so we were good to go. But then, guess what??
It transpired the developer did not own all of the land on which the new house was built; or so I am told because obviously now the site office do not want to answer my queries about this. And no one else in the chain wants to talk to me about it because it is not my part of the chain.
Why does this happen? Why have my clients been put under pressure (don’t worry about me, I am used to it) and been led to believe that the chain will fall apart as they are holding up the transaction? Why has it only just been noted a few days before the proposed completion date that the builder does not own all of the land on which the house is built? And are the estate agents complicit in this?
Why, most importantly, have my clients been told that there was a chance that they would move on Friday when that was never going to happen? Answers on the back of a postcard, please
This is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
2 responses
More bullying from developers and this needs to stop. We can only do this if we stand together as a profession and tell them we will not take any more harassment and bullying to meet idiotic demands especially when there is a chain.
All too frequently the lower orders in a chain don’t even know there’s a new build at the top.