My parents are purchasing a flat and we believe the transaction has been delayed as a result of both our and the vendor's solicitors being slow and not bothering to chase up the paperwork. The flat is in vacant possession, chain free and the vendors have absolute title yet it's taken almost 3 months for everything and we still don't have completion yet. We've already exchanged contracts but are now staying in hotels and have incurred a lot of unnecessary expenses. I would like to know if we could get any money back, either from our solicitor or from our vendor's, for the hotel fees we've incurred?
@Jem: Thanks for the answer but I believe ours is quite a unique case. Things were taking so long that our solicitor suggested that we exchanged contracts with the completion date being conditional on receiving consent of assignment from the landlord - which we did. Then the vendor's solicitor sent out a cheque for the notice of charge fee which apparently never arrived at the landlord's. He waited a fortnight and never once bothered to check if the cheque and documents had arrived safely. Now he's sent out another cheque and we can only hope it won't go astray this time. Similarly our solicitor didn't think of reminding the vendor's solicitor to chase up the landlord. How could any of this be acceptable? We could've saved so much money on hotels if they had dealt with the matter more efficiently.
Answer by Jem
No - three months sounds about right, our house was chain free but your solicitor has to do all the conveyancing and things to do with the land registry - basically checking out that everything is legal with the property before you move in to it. Ours took from the start of October until the end of December to go through so it should be completed shortly for you :)
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Orignal From: Can property buyers make a claim for hotel fees from their conveyancing solicitor?
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