As is often the case, I started the week thinking I was going to write about a particular matter and then something else comes across my desk which takes me in another direction. But, as I often say, the life of a conveyancer is anything if not predictable.
I was going to follow up last week’s diary by mentioning another query which causes me humour and concern, but I will leave that for next week. I need to tell you about what happened on Friday.
I am in a chain of transactions. I am selling an empty property at the top of the chain which, up until two weeks ago, had been tenanted. The completion date of today (Monday) was particularly important to my client: they needed to give notice to the tenant, ensure the tenant left and that the property was in good condition, and the buyer was happy with it.
It also tied in with the end of the fixed rate period on their mortgage.
I was surprised that the buyers’ conveyancer was happy to exchange contracts on a fixed completion date without knowing for sure that the tenant would leave the property – perhaps some alarm bells should have rung at that stage. But we knew the tenant would leave and the timings were all perfect for my client and fell into place very easily.
Or so we thought…. until Friday.
I first heard from the estate agent that there may be an issue when they called me to ask if I had heard about the issue with the chain. I had not (because we conveyancers are always the last to know anything).
The estate agent told me that the buyer of my client’s property had received their completion statement and had been shocked to see how much they were expected to pay. Not only were there all the extra charges (that we often mention), but the stamp duty was far more than expected. This appeared to be because one of the buyers already owned other properties and apparently the buyers’ conveyancer had only just noticed it.
The buyers did not have all of the funds as they had not budgeted for the extra stamp duty.
I was shocked on many levels, one of which was how had this only been discovered the working day before completion.
I called my client; he was angry, his wife was distraught. They were understandably worried that their mortgage payments were going to increase considerably, which they did not have the money to cover, and the property was no longer tenanted.
I received an email from the buyers’ conveyancer advising me of the situation and reassuring me that the buyers were doing all they could to get the extra monies. But it was not a small sum.
I don’t know how this information was fed through the rest of the chain, and I await the news today. But, as is often the case in these situations, I will go into my office not knowing what is going to happen. What I do know is that my day is probably not going to be easy – all because a buyer’s stamp duty position was not considered and discussed at the start of the transaction.
A basic question unasked, or so it seems. I will await confirmation with interest.
PS: I note that I have been shortlisted for an British Conveyancing Award for Property Commentator of the Year. I have never written to garner or seek any awards; they are merely my musings on the conveyancing world with the hope that they will provoke discussion and make conveyancers realise that they are not on their own when dealing with challenges.
Thank you to whoever nominated me.
This column is written by a real high street conveyancer who wishes to remain anonymous. Read more in Today’s Conveyancer every week.
