Complaining when buying a home goes wrong

Buying a home involves a chain of professionals: an estate agent, a solicitor or licensed conveyancer, a surveyor, and usually a mortgage lender and possibly a broker. When one of them gets something wrong, the money at stake is often the largest you will ever handle, and the complaint route is different for each of them. There is no single ombudsman for house purchases. Instead, the route depends on who you are complaining about and what went wrong.

The good news is that most of these routes are free. The Financial Ombudsman Service, which handles complaints about mortgage lenders, brokers, banks and ISA providers, is free to use and states that you don't need to pay anyone to represent you¹. Its award limit for complaints referred on or after 1 April 2026 about acts or omissions that occurred on or after 1 April 2019 is £455,000². But every route has deadlines, and the most important one is short: you generally must refer a complaint to the ombudsman within 6 months of the date on the firm's final response¹.

This page explains who to complain to about each professional involved in a purchase, what the eight week rule means, what evidence to keep, and where your options end if you disagree with the outcome.

What you can complain about when a home purchase goes wrong

A home purchase can go wrong in many places, and the first step is working out whose mistake it was. The Financial Conduct Authority's rules set out the basic pattern that applies to financial firms: consumers may complain to the firm and seek redress from it, and refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if the firm does not satisfy the complaint and it is appropriate to do so⁵. That pattern, complain to the firm first, then escalate, runs through almost every route described on this page.

The problems people most often want to complain about include:

• The estate agent: overvaluing a property, failing to pass on offers, misdescribing the home, or poor handling of the sale. The route here is the agent's redress scheme, covered on our page about complaining about an estate agent.
• The solicitor or conveyancer: missed deadlines, errors in the legal work, failure to raise enquiries about defects, or losing documents. Complaints go to the firm first, then to the Legal Ombudsman. Scottish Government guidance on shared equity purchases makes the point plainly: a buyer who discovers a defect in a new home is directed to speak to their solicitor first⁶.
• The surveyor: a valuation or survey that missed problems with the property, or a valuation so low that the mortgage fell through.
• The lender or broker: a mortgage that was underfunded, unsuitable advice, or administrative errors that delayed completion.
• Scheme administrators: if you bought through a government-backed scheme, each has its own complaints procedure. Help to Buy - Wales accepts complaints over the phone or in writing, about the scheme itself or about someone who works for it, and someone else can complain on your behalf⁷. The Help to Buy equity loan complaints process similarly accepts complaints via email, telephone or in writing⁸.

The Financial Ombudsman Service also handles complaints about banking and payment services, including current accounts, savings accounts, direct debits, money transfers and cheques⁹, which can matter when a deposit transfer goes wrong or a payment is delayed on completion day. If you're buying a new build home and the problem is with the property itself rather than a professional, our guide to complaining about a new build home covers the warranty and builder route.

Complain to the firm first: eight weeks for a final response

Whatever the complaint, the first step is the same: make a formal complaint to the firm involved. The Financial Ombudsman Service is explicit that a complaint starts with the company involved, and if the firm doesn't send you a final response letter within eight weeks, or you're unhappy with their response, you can bring the complaint to the ombudsman³. The eight week clock is the firm's window to investigate and give you its final answer.

The same rule appears across the ombudsman's guidance for different products, and it applies to other complaint handlers too. The Claims Management Ombudsman, which handles complaints about claims management companies, states that a claims management company has to give its final response to your complaint within eight weeks¹⁰. So the structure is consistent: complain, wait up to eight weeks, then escalate if the answer doesn't come or isn't satisfactory.

When you complain, put it in writing where you can, and keep a copy. The ombudsman will want to know when you first complained and what the firm said. If the firm sends a final response earlier than eight weeks, it should tell you in that letter that you have the right to refer the matter to the ombudsman. You then have 6 months from the date on your final response to make a complaint to the ombudsman¹.

Valuations and surveys that missed problems with the property

A surveyor's job is to check the property for defects in its condition that might affect its value¹³. When a survey or valuation goes wrong, the consequences fall on you: you may have paid for a report that missed serious problems, or a low valuation may have cost you the mortgage and the purchase.

The Financial Ombudsman Service publishes guidance on valuations and surveys that explains what it expects. One example it gives: if you paid for a HomeBuyer's report but only received a basic mortgage valuation, the ombudsman would generally expect you to query this with the lender on receiving the report¹⁴. In other words, part of the responsibility sits with the customer to notice what was delivered and raise it promptly.

A published case study shows how the ombudsman approaches valuation complaints. Terry complained about the valuation of a property he wanted to buy, which was carried out by an independent surveyor. The surveyor valued the property at a much lower cost than the asking price Terry had agreed, the seller would not change the price, and Terry did not have enough money to buy the house¹⁵. The ombudsman noted that an independent surveyor completed the valuation and directed Terry to the RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, to discuss the situation¹⁵. That is an important limit on the ombudsman's reach: where the valuation was done by a surveyor who is not a financial firm, the complaint route is the surveyor's own professional body rather than the Financial Ombudsman Service. RICS registration is also the standard required elsewhere in the house buying process: the First Homes scheme requires a valuation by a surveyor registered with RICS¹⁶.

Valuation disputes also arise in the schemes that operate in the nations. Under the House Sales Scheme in Northern Ireland, an independent valuer assesses the market value of your home, and if you disagree you can ask for a redetermination by Land & Property Services, whose valuation is final and can go up or down¹⁷. That is a scheme-specific route rather than an ombudsman one.

The ombudsman's quarterly complaints data gives a sense of scale: it received 27 new complaints about Help to Buy and Shared Equity Loans in Q1 2026/27, alongside 620 about cash ISAs including cash lifetime ISAs and help to buy ISAs¹⁸. Valuation and survey complaints about financial firms are a small but real part of its workload. Where a defect claim needs expert evidence, an independent report can decide whether the claim is worth pursuing: in one published case, a panel solicitors' report found a claim had reasonable prospects of success based on a National House-Building Council report finding defects in the property¹⁹. Our comparison of a HomeBuyer Report or Building Survey explains what each level of survey covers before you commission one.

Lender or broker mistakes: who has to put things right

When a mortgage goes wrong, responsibility can sit with the lender, the broker, or both, and the complaint route depends on who did what. The rules are set out in the FCA's consumer redress scheme provisions. Where a credit broker receives a complaint in relation to the subject matter of the scheme, it must forward the complaint to the lender and inform the consumer that it has been forwarded²⁰. So if you complain to a broker about a lending problem, the broker cannot simply close the file: it has to pass the complaint on and tell you it has done so.

The ombudsman's guidance on mortgage underfunding, where a customer's payments were set too low and the balance didn't reduce as expected, shows how it divides responsibility. It looks at how the mistake with repayments came about and who is responsible, whether that's the mortgage lender, a broker or someone else; the information provided about repayments; whether the customer could reasonably have known they were not paying enough; whether they could have sorted the problem sooner; and whether the lender or broker could have picked up on problems at the time²¹.

Where the complaint is about poor advice rather than an administrative error, the ombudsman's remedy is to put the customer in the financial position they would have been in with proper advice. Its guidance on interest-only and other mortgages states this might mean telling the broker or lender to make adjustments to the capital balance, or to compensate you for the cost of changing arrangements²². The lender's duty extends beyond the original sale: the ombudsman states a lender must respond fairly and constructively to concerns about paying off the capital, even if it didn't give advice about the mortgage and it wasn't mis-sold²².

Solicitors also carry duties at completion that protect the lender's money. Scottish Government guidance on settlement lists what the solicitor does: confirm to your lender that the home is now officially in your name, get the loan cheque from your lender, and get your contribution towards the cost of the home²³. If that step goes wrong, the complaint is against the solicitor, through the firm and then the Legal Ombudsman, not against the lender.

One further protection is worth knowing if things go badly wrong later. Under the pre-action protocol for mortgage possession claims, a lender must consider postponing starting a possession claim to allow a realistic period to sell the property, where the borrower demonstrates reasonable steps to market the property at an appropriate price in accordance with reasonable professional advice²⁴. That duty sits with the lender regardless of how the original complaint about the mortgage was resolved.

Early repayment charges and porting your mortgage when you move

Moving home often means ending one mortgage and starting another, and that is where early repayment charges bite. The ombudsman publishes a case study that shows the kind of dispute it sees. George was unhappy that his mortgage lender told him he would need to pay an early repayment charge to end his fixed-rate mortgage early²⁵. The case study also illustrates something else: the ombudsman records that a consumer can change their mind about complaining, and the service closed the case on that basis²⁵.

The detail of how early repayment charges work, how they are calculated and when they apply is covered in our guide to early repayment charges. What matters for complaints is this: if you believe the lender misdescribed the charge, applied it when it shouldn't have, or failed to warn you about it when you asked, that is a complaint about the lender's conduct, and it follows the route on this page: complain to the lender, wait up to eight weeks, then refer to the ombudsman within 6 months of the final response.

Porting, where you take your existing mortgage rate to a new property, is a lender's product decision rather than a right, so a refusal to port is harder to challenge than a misapplied charge. But if the lender or broker gave you incorrect information about porting, or delayed your application so that you lost the rate, those are conduct complaints the ombudsman can consider under the same process.

Taking your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service

Once the firm has responded, or eight weeks have passed without a response, you can refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The process is designed for consumers to use directly. You fill in the ombudsman's complaint form, and the service asks anyone considering using AI to help complete the form to read its guidelines on using AI before starting¹. Those guidelines say to avoid entering personal information you wouldn't want shared, such as health or banking information, to use AI only to help organise information or put it clearly, and to check the resulting text carefully¹.

The service is free and easy to use¹, and it can help if you have made a complaint to the financial business and you aren't happy with their answer²⁶. Its scope is broad. It can look at complaints about ISAs, including where you lost money because your adviser or investment company made an admin error or delayed a transfer or payment into your ISA account²⁷, which matters to buyers using a Lifetime ISA towards a deposit. Scheme administrators are covered too: Help to Buy (Wales) Ltd's own guidance tells customers that if they are not happy with the way a complaint was handled or the result, they may be able to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service²⁸.

The ombudsman decides cases on the basis of relevant law and regulations, the regulator's rules, guidance and standards, industry codes of practice and, where appropriate, good industry practice¹. It considers the facts and evidence from both the business and the customer, then sets out its findings explaining the decision and what needs to be done to put things right¹. If it thinks the business treated you unfairly, it will tell the business to put you back where you'd be if it hadn't made a mistake, and possibly make an award for distress and inconvenience as well⁹.

Evidence to gather before you escalate

An ombudsman decides on the evidence both sides provide, so what you keep from the purchase can decide the outcome. The ombudsman's own guidance gives examples of the kind of material that carries weight: recordings of a sale call, copies of application forms completed by you, or screenshots of an online application²⁹. For a home purchase, the equivalents are your mortgage offer and illustration, the survey or valuation report, correspondence with the solicitor or estate agent, and any written quotes or fee agreements.

Some evidence has formal requirements elsewhere in the process that show what good records look like. Revenue Scotland's guidance on reclaiming the Additional Dwelling Supplement states that claims made more than 12 months from the filing date of the original return require proof of sale of the previous property, and lists what it accepts: a copy of the disposition of sale, copies of Land Registration documents, or a letter from your solicitor that clearly states the date of sale³⁰. The lesson transfers: a dated, specific document from a professional beats a recollection.

Practical steps before you escalate:

1. Assemble the timeline: dates of offers, searches, the mortgage application, the survey and completion.
2. Keep the firm's final response letter, and note the date on it, because the six month window runs from there¹.
3. Keep receipts for every cost you say the mistake caused you, including any extra legal fees. For context, the government's Right to Buy guide puts typical solicitor or licensed conveyancer costs at £500 to £700², so a repeated or aborted transaction is a real, documentable loss.
4. Write down what you want to happen: a refund, compensation for costs, or a correction to the mortgage account.

The ombudsman also notes that where a complaint covers both a claim and the sale of a policy, it generally investigates the claim first before considering the sale³¹. The same logic applies to a purchase: what actually went wrong, evidenced, comes before arguments about how the product was sold.

Compensation: up to £455,000 plus interest

The Financial Ombudsman Service can tell a business to pay compensation, and the limit depends on when the complaint was referred and when the events occurred. For complaints referred on or after 1 April 2026 about acts or omissions that occurred on or after 1 April 2019, the limit is £455,000. Earlier referral periods carry lower limits: £445,000 for complaints referred on or after 1 April 2025, £430,000 for those referred on or after 1 April 2024, and £415,000 for complaints referred between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, in each case about acts or omissions that occurred on or after 1 April 2019⁴.

For the vast majority of home purchase complaints, the limit is not the constraint: the ombudsman's starting point is to put you back where you'd be if the business hadn't made a mistake, and possibly to add an award for distress and inconvenience⁹. In practice that means refunds of fees, compensation for interest you paid or lost, reimbursement of costs the mistake caused, and amounts for the stress of a delayed or collapsed purchase. Where a delay left you borrowing, the ombudsman states it may recommend a refund with interest if you took a loan or used a credit card²⁷, which is the pattern it applies to Lifetime ISA deposit shortfalls.

Awards are made against the business, not paid by the taxpayer, and the business must comply with a decision you accept. The ombudsman's published complaint data shows the scale of its work: it received 8,900 new complaints about current accounts between April and June 2026, and 4,100 about car and motorcycle insurance in Q1 2026/27¹⁸. Mortgage and home buying complaints are handled through the same machinery.

Where an ombudsman decision ends your options

An ombudsman's final decision is the end of the road within that process. The Financial Ombudsman Service states that if either side is unhappy with the decision, they can't appeal an ombudsman's final decision to another ombudsman³². There is no higher ombudsman to review it, and disagreement alone is not a ground for challenge.

The decision is binding on the business if you accept it, but not on you. The ombudsman's own consumer leaflet puts it plainly:

So your options after a final decision are: accept it and take the award, or reject it and pursue the matter in court instead. Rejecting the decision means giving up the award the ombudsman said the business should pay, and court action carries its own costs and risks, so it is not a step to take lightly. There is also a time limit on accepting: if the ombudsman doesn't hear from you within the specified timeframe, in most cases you are treated as having rejected the decision, and it is not binding on the business³².

Not every complaint succeeds, and the ombudsman publishes cases it did not uphold. In one example, Tom complained about an insurer's refusal to cover the full cost of an emergency operation abroad, and the ombudsman did not uphold his complaint³³. Home purchase complaints can end the same way, and a decision against you closes the ombudsman route entirely. If you believe the decision was wrong, the remaining route is the courts, and independent legal advice explains the costs, time limits and prospects of that route. For free, impartial help with money questions at any stage, MoneyHelper and the ombudsman's own guidance are available, and our guide to consumer protection in UK financial services sets out the full range of options.