Who is responsible?

Hi

We went out of our way to make sure our property was legal and all paperwork correct etc when we purchased some 7 years ago, but it would now appear that most of the properties where we are seem to be illegal and are having to go through the process to make them legal now under this new process of making illegal properties legal.

Our solicitor (who we still use) told use at the time that everything was in place and as it should be and even went as far as going to the Town Hall at Almeria to ensure all paperwork etc was in place. The properties are still not on the Cadastro (ours included) and despite trying to follow this up many times we have had no joy - we have been told that the original seller simply 'failed' to enter the segregation papers properly but it was not an issue as it was all sorted out properly anyway. We have signed and registered copies of the segregation papers ourselves.

We have looked into again and it would appear the Solicitor was awaiting the final certification papers from the electrician, plumber and final certificate from the Architect as well as the first habitation licence from the promoter as the electric and water were already installed and 'on' - and we understood that all of these would have been insitu and given to the Bank for a mortgage to be agreed - is this correct?

If this documentation was not available or not provided, the mortgage would not have been granted - yes or no?

If this is the case and the paperwork was NOT insitu, how can a mortgage have been agreed?

If the property is illegal, with a mortgage on it, who is responsible??

Hello,

The bank is free to grant a mortgage regardless of the First Occupation Licence ( LPO ) situation. The most immediate effect of a lack of LPO for the mortgage is - if the mortgage holder stopped paying the repayments and the bank repossessed - the difficulty for the bank to find a buyer at an auction if the dwelling has not got it in place, as the bank would be left with an irregular dwelling if there were no bidders at the auction. The fact that the bank approved the mortgage does not mean the bank has made a previous research regarding the occupation Licence.

If the dwelling is in an irregular situation, the usual procedure is to check if there has been legal malpractice on the part of the lawyer that handled the purchase transaction. In any case, and responding your question, the bank is not responsible.

Regards,

So how do I go about finding out if the lawyer did their job or not? I took their word for it first time round! All was legal and in place, they dealt with everything, bank was happy and gave us the mortgage.. what more could we/can we do? I have been trying to get a response from the solicitor who dealt with it but am getting no response! How do I stand on this?

We have paid once for all of this to be done, why should we have to pay all over again? Surely it can happen again if this is the case? Whose word do I take for what?

I have the segregation papers but what do I do if they have not been filed? Where do I go for the certificates and LPO which I understood were already in situ? Who would have the originals/copies of these?