Is this legal???

S

Supergod

Guest
Hi all,

I’ve recently bought a house and was under pressure to close the sale before the builders holidays. I got the bank to send out the cheque to my solicitor last Tuesday so we would be ready to go. On Wednesday I checked all the snags and told my solicitor I wanted to close. She has drawn down the cheque into her account but she tells me we can’t close as she still has to do some registry checks. She says it will either be tomorrow or the next day. Is it legal for her to draw down my cheque as I am now paying the mortgage interest without having a house? (Aside from this there are still a couple of snags to complete that I have agreed with the builder to complete after the holidays as I am in a rush to get into the house. These are very minor but the solicitor wants me to hold off on closing until these are complete but I would still be paying my mortgage for the next 2 weeks and she would be creaming any interest on the money in her account).
 
Is it legal for her to draw down my cheque as I am now paying the mortgage interest without having a house?

Heres the problem. Its not your money - its the banks. She cannot close the transaction until she can be sure that everything she needs to do to comply with all of her requirements to your lender are in order e.g. searches etc.,etc. It could be (?) that your builders solicitor does not have all the requisite paperwork in place to close.

Now, if everything is in place then she should be able to close but to do that she needs the funds. In the ideal world, the solicitor would simply call the lender when everything was in place, they would get an immediate transfer and you would then close. ln reality, and from bitter experience I can tell you , the solicitor can end up chasing chasing chasing funds, being hounded by builders solicitors and purchasers alike, to find out if the funds are available ( not "on their way" ) to set up a closing. I can only do a closing 24 hours after receipt of funds to give time to set up searches.

So its a choice - leave funds to last possible moment and run risk of giving over the entire day to chasing them for one client or get them in advance to be properly organised.

Check with her that its only searches that need doing and nothing else. If it is just searches, then she should be able to do it now.

mf
 
I know what you mean mf1 but could she not just leave the cheque "sitting on the desk" until everything else is ready. There was no need to lodge it in my opinion. If she got her way now she would have me wait the 2 weeks with a large amount of money in her account while i have to pay the mortgage with no house.
 
Supergod said:
...could she not just leave the cheque "sitting on the desk" until everything else is ready. There was no need to lodge it in my opinion.
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Personal view here, but I think I'd be very concerned by a phone call saying "the cheque was sitting on my desk but it's been.... stolen/damaged/gone missing/blew away". Surely the safest place for it is in the bank.
I can see your fears over it sitting in their bank account rather than in your own, but if you weigh up the difference between what they'll make from the interest vs. what they'd lose in bad reputation and future clients I'm sure that it's worth more to them to proceed when able and ensure a happy client for future work and personal reference to others...... at least I really hope that logic would/will ring through.
 
but for every month that passes by i pay €2500 for nothing.......i know it's not going to be a full month but it's going to be at least a week = ~€600. And i'm still paying rent on top of this. There must be a more economical (For me!) way to proceed with this.
 
she will need to lodge it to client account where i believe she is not allowed to gain interest on the money.
it's safer in the bank and if you are that unhappy with her tell her now and look for a reduction in her fee
 
therave said:
she will need to lodge it to client account where i believe she is not allowed to gain interest on the money.
it's safer in the bank and if you are that unhappy with her tell her now and look for a reduction in her fee
Click to expand...

Solicitors are allowed to earn interest on money in client accounts and in fact in the past when interest rates were much higher this was a nice little earner for some of them. If you specify it in advance however I believe they are obligated to account for the interest and pay it over to you however a lot of people don't specify this.

Edit: By account for the interest I mean the interest received not what you would be paying on the mortgage.
 
guess i should have enquired before hand. Thanks for your help.
 
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