solicitor let motgage offer expire!

[lyns]

our solicitor allowed our mortage offer to expire! we were purchasing a property which was in propbate so that took some time to sort out, then there were issues with the septic tank which delayed the exchange. however my solicitor first enquired about the septic tank end august..and got no reply from the sellers solicitor but did not rerequest details until november! although we commenced with the purchase in august our solicitor did not ask the seller for the 'energy efficiency report' until december ...only to find the seller did not have one! ....more delay.all these problems which i think should have been sorted earlier resulted in.....our solicitor informed our mortgage supplier(northern rock) on the 9/12/11 that we wished to exchange on the 16/12/11 only for northern rock to bring it to the attention of our solicitor that our mortgage offer expired on saturday the 10/12/11... this was late in the eve friday and the exchange could not go ahead then.therefore our mortgage offer expired! we went ahead with the sale of our house and are now renting we have to re apply for a mortgage and hope that the seller of the house we are interested in holds it for us! IS THIS OUR SOLICITORS FAULT?

[lyns]

Any comments welcome please, even if it's just your personal opinion.

[Moby Jones]

Personal view:

It's your fault for not keeping on the solicitors back ensuring that all is well before the end of your deadline.

It's also your fault if you did not keep in touch with the mortgage company explaining what the delays were so they could have extended or even sorted out a new offer stopping you from being in your current situation.

You are a buyer, it's your job to accept responsibility for those that you hire ?(solicitors) do the job you want them too. Blaming the solicitors is not really accepting your responsibilities IMHO.

[lyns]

Okay...but then what's the point of the solicitor! I may aswell have made the mess myself instead of paying them to help me!

[Moby Jones]

Originally Posted by lyns

Okay...but then what's the point of the solicitor! I may aswell have made the mess myself instead of paying them to help me!

You've missed my point. You alreadu know why you hired a solicitor otherwise you would not have paid for their services.

If you had a builder building you an extension and you were not happy with the service I bet you'd have told them and given them feedback....

[IFA]

Hi lyns,

Personally I think Moby Jones is being a little harsh on you here.

From the info that you've given it would seem that your solicitor may have been lapse in their responsibilities to you as their client. You have appointed them to represent you and you should be able to trust them to take charge of the situation without you having to monitor their activities to ensure that they are doing the correct things, in the correct way, at the correct time.

It's true that you could have raised your concerns at an earlier time when you sensed that things were not being dealt with in a correct and timely fashion and this may have prevented the predicament that you are now in, but I don't think that this mitigates their responsibility to act professionally on your behalf.

I would raise your concerns with the solicitor, or their superior in the firm, and see what response comes back. Ultimately you should have the right to contact the Legal Ombudsman to adjudicate in the matter for you if you are not satisfied with their response.

I would be interested to hear what Richard Webster's opinion is on this.

[Jeannie D]

Surely Northern Rock bears some responsibility? If I've understood Lyns' post correctly, the solicitor tried to confirm the mortgage offer the day before it was due to expire. The building society, after all, determined the deadline. Why set a deadline that it had no intention of honouring (or its administrative processes wouldn't allow)? I think there are grounds for complaint there.

[IFA]

Hi Jeannie,

The offer expired on 10th december (it's a perfectly normal and reasonable practice for a lender to impose a deadline on the validity of a legally binding mortgage offer of advance) but the solicitors wanted to exchange contracts on 16th december, 6 days after the offer was no longer valid.

If they had contacted the lender in good time they could have requested an offer extension period to allow for the delays in the purchasing process and to enable a later exchange / competion. If the lender had refused to extend (as they are at liberty to do) then the buyer could possibly have then had time to organise a new offer from a different lender (or even the same lender after re-applying).

Doing this could have prevented the last minute collapse of the purchasing process and as far as I'm aware a good solicitor would have been foresighted enough to see this issue arising in advance and could have advised their client accordingly.

I don't think northern Rock are at fault personally, although I guess you could argue that it would be good be good practice for lenders to notify buyers of the forthcoming offer expiry date as it comes near but I don't know of any that do this.

The offer expiry date would be clearly stated on the offer for both the client and the solicitor to see and take note of, but personally I would expect the solicitor to take on the responsibility of ensuring that the purchase completes before the deadline, not the buyer who has appointed a legal representative to deal with the transaction on their behalf and who cannot be assumed to be experienced, knowledgeable or alert enough to notice this themselves.

[Jeannie D]

I see what you mean, IFA. Thank you for explaining.

[lyns]

thank you for your comments.
just a few more details...Throughout this i was in contact with my solicitor over every detail calling her weekly always trying to move things along.on tuesday 6/12/11 my solicitor said everything was ready for contracts to be exchanged and asked us for an exchange date which we gave as 16/12/11 she agreed there should be no problem so i left it with her.on monday 12/12/11 at lunch time i called her just to confirm all ok so we could book a removal van, her reply was...i thought my assistant rang you on friday (she had not) then she explained that she had called northern rock friday 9/12/11 to inform them of the exchange date and it was then that they brought it to her attention that the offer expired sat 10/12/11.I was told she had tried to exchange there and then but it was too late finances had gone home! no one tried to contact me to let me know.
i am very angry with myself for not knowing when my own mortgage offer expired...but we have only ever made 2 property purchases in our lifetime and solicitors do it every day!