We got a mortgage offer from a mortgage lender for a shared ownership purchase and we were scheduled to complete 2 weeks ago. On the day of completion instead of money we got an email from our solicitor saying that our lender's solicitors won't request the money from the lender until a list of things have been met. There were minor things like, the mortgage approval from the organisation who's selling us the property was ambiguous, some forms completed had empty fields instead of NA and things like that. We are now 2 weeks after, we have become homeless as we had to give notice to leave our current property and the landlord found other tenants, the offer from the lender has expired, the seller is threatening to remarket the property and we are nowhere near completion, we keep setting completion days only to get more points for clarification from the lender's solicitors. They are also extremely slow getting back to us, it takes them days to look at a single one page document and then when we think everything is OK they come back saying is not. Our solicitor has tried to ask them to suggest themselves in advance what they need, it didn't work.

Both our solicitor and the seller are saying they've never encounter this problem in such a big scale and considering that the property is brand new they were expecting things to run a lot smoother than that.

Is there anything we can do to put pressure to these people, at the end of the day I understand they are trying to protect their clients' interests but they are just being unreasonable and their just taking their time. Also they are going to charge us at the end for their legal fees and the lender will add them to the mortgage figure.

Anybody can suggest anything I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Hi,

You used to be able to complain about solicitors through the law society but this has now been delegated to legal complaints service (run by the Law Society)

To complain about your solicitor, or find out how they can help

• visit www.legalcomplaints.org.uk
• or call helpline on 0845 608 6565

Open Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm.

I thought that there would be the sellers solicitor and your solicitor and that your solicitor would handle the activity on behalf of the mortgage company offering your mortgage.

You could ask your solicitor if they think you have any recourse about this, and if they would recommend the LCS (they probably won't).

It doesn't hurt to try all avenues of attack. Written letters demanding more immediate attention highlighting your severe circumstances could help.

What do your solicitors say about the planned completion date from when you exchanged contracts? Normally if things don't happen by this point one party has an option to recover costs etc from the other, though I haven't done this I'm not too sure what the steps are. More research or helpful posts might help you there. You may be able to recover hotel and storage costs?

I had a similar issue with a surveyor that would not write up the report (for nearly a month) delaying our house purchase. I was faxing and ringing and writing demanding letters for that so best of luck!

Sparky.