solicitor didnt get us to sign title deeds

D

deedee80

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Hi there,

I'm just wondering if anyone has ever encountered this before. Myself and my partner bought a new apartment last year and got the keys in September. There was a lot of visiting the solicitor signing documents etc so as far as I knew all was in order. We are now, 9 months later, upgrading to a 3 bed semi but going through a different solicitor. Our new solicitor contacted the bank to release our title deeds but was told they were never received. We got on to the old solicitor to see what the problem was and he said that he had not sent them back as they had not been signed by us, and was a bit rude about it. He has never requested us to sign them in the past nine months. Would this be normal code of conduct? We are eager to get contracts signed and things moving and as you can imagine this is holding things up considerably as I cannot get the time off work with very little notice to travel to this solicitor.

Quite annoyed at the moment!
 
Hi DeeDee,

Title Deeds can consist of many different documents and you don't "sign" them as such. Sounds like he maybe overlooked getting you to sign a particular document. It's also possible that registration in the Land Registry is not yet complete - sometimes this can take up to a year!...but your old Solr could write to them (the Land Reg) asking them to "expedite" the matter as the property is now for sale and the Land Reg are usually quite helpful. I'm presuming your property is registered in the Land Reg and if your new Solicitor can get a Folio number he can look on the Lang Reg website to see if there is an application pending.

Whatever's going on he's out of order being so rude and it was his responsibility to have you sign each document and he really should have contacted you when he realised all was not in order.

I would ask your new Solr to follow up...I guarantee he won't be so rude!

Best of luck,

LegalEagle.
 
Thanks for that. As it turns out the solicitor has not registered our details so this is turning into a bit of a nightmare. The crazy this is, back in March we were going through this solicitor for the purchase of a property which we subsequently pulled out of. However during all this time he never thought to get us to sign this documentation. Not sure what we should be doing. 6 weeks will delay things greatly.
 
Actually this is very common nowadays because most people only want to call to their solicitor once- and some solicitors only want to see the clients once. The documents you signed were probably loan offers and contracts. The 'title deed' you refer to is probably the transfer or conveyance which is only recieved by your solicitor from the vendor on or after closing ( depending on the closing method). So it is not available to sign until possibly AFTER closing. At which poiint the solicitor has to send it for stamping. I have found that the stamping process at the moment is taking months in Cork - I'm not aware of whether there are similar delays elsewhere. So it can be several months after closing that I will call upon the clients to sign the deed and I can only register once it is signed. I'm not sure whether 9 months is excessive in the circumstances- it depends on the nature of the transaction and whether there have been delays in the stamping process.
 
You old solicitor was sloppy in not registering you title immediately and is now miffed that you are using a different solicitor this time round. As an Auctioneer I have become accustomed to taking a lot of flak for the suspected sins of my colleagues, and have lost count of the number of good sales that have fallen thru, due to laziness or negligence on the part of solicitors. There are of course good solicitors out there, but they don't wear badges so they're hard to spot. Twelve years ago a solicitor failed to register a property I purchased and allowed me to buy it with a judgement mortgage on it.... He's still happily working away. You have to get in and sign the documentation immediately, you don't have a choice. The sooner he starts the sooner its all over. Next time chase your solicitor to ensure that he's registered your title straight away.
 
thats what I'm thinking too as I went sale agreed on the place I am selling 3 weeks ago and this is only coming to light now. We have not been registered with the land registry + no title deeds. New solicitor said its a disgrace. I am meeting him later to go through things, hopefully he has a good plan. Old solicitor has now sent all documentation that he never dealt with to the new guy. It is worrying as the person buying my place keeps enquiring after the contracts and we are in no position to be able to have them sent out until some of this mess is sorted.
 
Deedee - it's not completely unheard for a Contract to say that you are selling as the person entitled to be registered as the owner - so try not to worry too much about issuing Contracts - your Solicitor will find a way around it.

LegalEagle.
 
Thanks Legal Eagle. The new solicitor is very helpful but I think he will have his work cut out for him. Even the documentation for our house doesn't mention our house on it, its for the road behind ours! So he will have to get on to the builders solicitors about that also. We paid a small amount of stamp as we were under the threshold but new guy told us that this was not dealt with and we were also charged for searches which were never carried out. It would really make you wonder....
 
Hi DeeDee we had the same problem a couple of years ago. 1st place never registered by solicitor 1 (looks like he forgot) and when solicitor 2 requested them the bank didn't have them. It took a lot of phonecalls between Sol 1, 2 and me and at took almost 2 1/2 months before we actually got first contracts signed as buyer wouldn't sign until deeds were back. She wanted an undertaking the registry would be completed but my solicitor couldnt give one as he wasn't my solicitor when buying the apartment and solicitor 1 refused to give it, even when my solicitor suggested she act jointly on the sale and be paid for ir.
Was a complete nightmare! Hope it works out better for you though.
 
This is how things are at the moment.

The lease for my property makes no reference to my property so new solicitor got on to the builders solicitor about this. They refused to deal with him as he was not the original solicitor they were dealing with. All the documents have to now go back to first solicitor so he can get on to the builders solicitor and get the correct information (easier said than done I imagine). God knows how long this will take considering he did nothing for 9 months. Without the lease being correct the solicitor cannot lodge the dealing and therefore no contracts can be sent. This is turning into a nightmare and I am at my wits end. I have no faith in the first solicitor. Does anyone know if I have any other options or rights where this situation is concerned? The person buying my property is now phoning the estate agent every day looking for contracts and the contracts for the property we are buying are already in.
 
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