And exactly what were the penalties?

If the buyer fails to complete ... http://blog.aboutconveyancing.com/2009/12/purchase-c...
A typical contract will have something like ...
If the Buyer fails to complete at the end of the Notice period, he forfeits the deposit of 10% of the purchase price. If the deposit paid on exchange was less than 10% the Seller is entitled to pursue the Buyer for the shortfall. The Seller may also sue the Buyer for breach of contract and damages.

As I mentioned above, there are no penalties (in England) for pulling out before exchange. Things are sometimes rushed so that exchange and completion are (almost) at the same time.

These are apparently from The Standard Conditions of Sale, so I would expect any contract to include it whether drawn up by solicitor of some semi-professional conveyancer. Quite a substantial penalty, especially around here where you are lucky to get a cheap house for £200,000, so penalty is £20,000.

Edited by StephenTodd (Thu 04-Sep-14 14:51:07)

Quite a substantial penalty, especially around here where you are lucky to get a cheap house for £200,000, so penalty is £20,000.

And in London SE23 upwards of £500K, quite a lot up. So against a minimum £50K plus costs the loss of any pre-payment to PN pales into insignificance.

Pretty standard.

But what about claiming damages for pre-ordering telephony services or measuring for curtains and having them made? I doubt you could claim for those.

I suggest that the identification of the suppliers of all services, eg phone, broadband, electricity, gas etc, should be included in the Conditions of Sale; and if possible, checked by the buyer whilst viewing the property.

Too late apparently for your daughters, unfortunately.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Pretty standard.

But what about claiming damages for pre-ordering telephony services or measuring for curtains and having them made? I doubt you could claim for those.

As said above: "the loss of any pre-payment to PN pales into insignificance".

Also, the penalties I quoted were for failure to comply with the contract by the buyer. It seems things are much more complicated when the seller reneges.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t... (55 page thread)

Post deleted by zrerz

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

I suggest that the identification of the suppliers of all services, eg phone, broadband, electricity, gas etc, should be included in the Conditions of Sale; and if possible, checked by the buyer whilst viewing the property.

Too late apparently for your daughters, unfortunately.

What exactly would that achieve? They know which suppliers they intend using for their services and all are different from those
used by the vendors with the exception of council tax and water/sewerage where there is no choice. Incidentally such details would normally not be included in the Conditions of Sale but rather in the enquiries before contract if thought to be relevant.

As an example, in one of the properties the vendor used BT and had FTTC, my daughter will be going with Plusnet so other than confirming that the property is connected to an FTTC enabled cabinet this means little since the connection will have been terminated when she completed her purchase. As to the other property, the landline has already been terminated and only ever had an ADSL connection despite being <25m from its PCP and its FTTC twin.

Morning

I should have enlarged my original comment to make it clear that I meant the existing suppliers to the Sellers, so that your daughters knew whom to contact if problems arose, during and after their purchases.

One of my daughters carries out house conveyancing and also my reading of queries to newspapers etc have made me aware that problems in that area arise quite frequently, so being aware of which companies are supplying the existing services to the sellers would possibly speed up the transfers.

Edited by deleted (Mon 08-Sep-14 06:44:20)