What are interactual property rights?

What are my rights when buying a property when the estate agent cheats?

• I was about to buy a house which was advertised as freehold but my solicitor later on found that the property actually belonged to a bank and was given on lease of 10 years. The most dodgy thing was that it was put on the market just a month after the lease was granted. They refused to transfer the title directly to my name on completion but proposed that on completion, the seller would payoff the lease, get the title in his name and then transfer it. Also, the bank didn't want to give us in writing that they are ready to sell....we ended up losing a lot of money and not buying the property... not to mention the endless dreams of celebrating the christmas in new home...What are my rights for claiming the expenses from the solicitors for misguiding and selling the leasehold property as freehold? They were so pursuing and wanted to pay my solicitors fees if we bought the property. can i have some opinions...

• Answer:

  Which country are you in? The language and terminology you use sounds like the UK, but I am familiar with English law and procedures and I cannot believe that what you describe could happen. No solicitor or buyer would ever fail to notice that a property was actually leasehold when it was described as freehold. So I cannot believe that even a dodgy estate agent would lie about this. Checking title is the first thing your solicitor does and the costs are very low, so you would know very early and there would not be any great cost involved if you then decided to pull out. And the seller's proposal you describe sounds far fetched for commercial property. But it would be unheard of for residential. For one thing, most residential buyers need mortgages and mortgage lenders will only lend money for normal freehold or long term (60 years plus) leasehold. So, either you are very confused over what happened, or you are not in the UK, or you are making it up...