Agent or Solicitor negligence missing stamp duty deadline?

It probably comes down to what this line from your summary actually means

"The conveyancing solicitor was instructed with clear instruction of the March 31st deadline."

If the solicitor accepted the instruction on the basis that time was of the essence and the purchase must be completed by the deadline, then you may have some redress.

If the solicitor accepted the instruction on the basis that it acknowledged that the date was important, but did not guarantee to be able to meet it, or accept liability for your losses as a result of missing it, then it will be much more difficult for you to get anything from the situation.

What does it say in the letter of engagement from the solicitor?

In the first instance, the Solicitor will have a formal complaints procedure and you should consider starting a complaint formally down that route.

Hi Gary,

This sounds harsh, but I only have 2 Rules in business:

Rule 1 - No one will ever do anything you ask first time around

Rule 2 - If Rule 1 does not apply they won't do it right anyway

With regards to negligence:

Estate agents act for the vendor not the purchaser so to get any where really the vendor would need to complain to the TPO. There is no contract with the estate agents to chase your bank or solicitor.

On the solicitors side I would make a complaint direct to them and see what response you get as you can always escalate the complaint to the law society. However missing a planned date for completion is an extremely common occurrence unfortunately and not always the solicitors fault.

From past experience I doubt you would be able to claim for any thing other than an actual cost on the transaction eg £400. Future costs and potential losses you can't really quantify.

Neil is right - the estate agent doesn't have a contract with you, you simply offered to buy a property from them. The estate agent works for, and is paid by the vendor, not you.

Equally I can't imagine a solicitor ever accepting an instruction on the basis that he would meet the stamp duty deadline because so many factors are beyond his control.

Even if you had somehow managed to negotiate such an agreement with the solicitor the best you could possibly hope for is the cost of the extra stamp duty. It was your decision to pull out of buying the property, so you couldn't claim for theoretical loss of rent or the costs associated with finding and buying a different property.

In short I think you're flogging a dead horse.

PS You quantify your losses at £9,400. In reality you've lost £400 plus the opportunity cost of buying a property before the new stamp duty rate kicked in.

The latter is completely hypothetical. No court or complaints service (e.g. TPO) would accept that you'd lost £9,400

If there were still enquiries being raised on the 10th, you were on a hiding to nothing I am afraid. I had everything in place at the end of November and only just made the deadline, no chain, private sale. End of January was very optimistic.

Since you now have to pay the enhanced SDLT anyway, why did you pull out? Not your most rational decision....

I agree with Steve.....your loses are mainly opportunity costs. Some might argue that given your concerns about the looming stamp duty changes that you could have made your offer price dependent on completion before 31st of March. That would have given the vendor incentive to push for timely completion.

In my experience property transactions are rarely completed in 8 weeks or less.

On two occasions we have bought property with no chain at either end and one took some 14 weeks to complete and the other 12.

It doesn't matter how good your solicitor is, some things take time and a bad (or busy) solicitor on the other end will always slow things down. In addition there is paperwork to be completed by the seller which again can slow things down if they are not organised.

What I would have done is made the offer conditional on the seller that if a certain date was not met, you would pay X amount less (50% of additional stamp duty for instance). Of course they may not have taken up your offer then.

If queries were still being raised on 10th March, and you waited until 23rd March to follow up on those queries it is unlikely that this would have gone through in time. However set in stone you viewed the completion date of 31st March it was only ever a target date for everyone else dealing with your purchase, unless it was specified in the sales contract. If that were so, then you would not have lost anything as your solicitor would have inserted a clause to state that it was by that date or not at all and ensuring you were refunded any costs associated with the aborted purchase.

As well as agreeing with what people have said above about your inflated figures, I'm afraid that the only person responsible for not chasing the conveyance... is yourself. You solicitor is your agent, and will (mostly) act on your instructions, it's still your responsibility.

I too was buying a property, which had been agreed back in July 2015, which I only just completed in time to miss the additional SDLT at 16:15 on 31st March! And that was with chasing conveyancing issues *every week* for 9 months, and every other day for the whole of March.

Throughout the process I was fully up to speed with what was being asked, of whom, and when. There's only 1 rule in conveyancing: push, push, push.

As a slight aside, whilst I know it's frustrating, what you describe is how conveyancing solicitors work. They raise queries / request searches / write a letter etc, then the file gets put down. And it stays down until something happens which means they have to pick it back up.

I've got a conveyancing friend, and he has 70 cases to work on at any point in time! That's about 30 mins per week, per case. At no point is he ever scratching around for something to do and thinks: "I know, I'll pick up Gary's case and see where we're up to." There's just not enough time. That's conveyancing life.

So sorry, I'm afraid I think you'll get next to no where with this, other than maybe a partial refund of your £400, if you're lucky.

Reply to the comment left by "Colin McNulty" at "07/05/2016 - 17:18":

"I’ve got a conveyancing friend, and he has 70 cases to work on at any point in time! That’s about 30 mins per week, per case. At no point is he ever scratching around for something to do and thinks: “I know, I’ll pick up Gary’s case and see where we’re up to.” There’s just not enough time. That’s conveyancing life."
So true - which is why it is so important to call regularly for an update as it keeps your file towards the top of that pile!