Why bank blunders can turn your house move into a living nightmare
I t was nine days before Christmas and Kate Ross and her young family were on the road from London to their new home in Worthing, West Sussex. But instead of moving in, a banking error left them in limbo with a baby, a toddler, a cat and a dog and two removal lorries. Four days passed before they eventually obtained the keys, during which time they racked up storage and transport costs of £3,600.
Ross’s saga is extreme, but not unusual. A processing glitch meant that the funds transferred by her buyer did not reach her solicitor’s account until four days after completion day, with four households in the property chain stuck in expensive purgatory.
According to the British Association of Removers (BAR), delays on completion day are commonplace while the transfer of funds is confirmed. Most are hours, rather than days, but the impact on households and their purses can be enormous.
“It happens very regularly. We rock up to the property and can’t get in,” says BAR’s director general, Ian Studd. “Up to a quarter of completions are delayed, half by more than two hours. On any given Friday there’s a fleet of removal lorries outside new homes unable to get in.”
Banking delays are the main cause. Money from buyers sent by the CHAPS payment system is only guaranteed to arrive on an appointed day, not at an appointed time, and even short delays by banks can have a knock-on effect in a long chain of buyers and sellers. Stringent money laundering checks, requiring scrutiny of certain transfers, can further hold things up.
Completion can be scuppered if a buyer’s payment reaches the seller’s solicitor after 4pm, as there may not be time to redeem the seller’s mortgage before the CHAPS system shuts down. For completions falling on a
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