Swapping Contracts

tea4one

Registered User
Messages
21
Hi Folks,

The other day I called my solicitor to find out if he was ready to send the contracts back to the vendors solicitor (he had a couple of things to clarify). When I called he was happy enough to send the contracts back but stressed that I needed to instruct him to send them back. He told me that since I did not yet have a mortgage and if any issues should arise after we send out the signed contracts, then I could get sued if the purchase did not follow through (or something to that effect). We went around in circles for a few minutes with plenty of the aforementioned language which made me feel really uncomfortable. At the end of the conversation he said, look, I can send out the contracts subject to you drawing down a mortgage.


This seemed liked the ideal solution to me so I agreed. The day afterwards when I thought about this, it seemed like the obvious thing to do since nobody has their mortgage check in hand when they sign the contracts (we have our loan offer signed and returned to the bank and my mortgage rep said it is perfectly fine to proceed with contract swaps).



So my question is - is it standard practice for a solicitor to send back signed contracts to the vendors solicitor "subject to successful mortgage drawdown"? Like I said, this seems like the obvious thing to do in any case, so I am not sure why my solicitor made a fuss about it.
 
The vendor may take the view that you are introducing a condition to the contract and may reject it (i.e. not accept your conditional signature).
 
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