Time between exchanging and completion?

matt9713

I'm in the process of buying a property, and have all the documents ready to sign. The solicitor has advised that as soon as we send in the signed documents we can proceed with exchanging contracts and completing. What stikes me as being strange is that they wanted to exchange and complete on the same day.

My understanding was that in most cases you would exchange and then complete a couple of weeks later. The current vendor wants to get everything legally binding ASAP and is wanting to proceed with exchanging this week, but if we do this then it means we would also be the legal owners of the property this week which is a bit sooner than we wanted. We've currently got one calender month left on our tenancy agreement and didn't want to have to be responsible for 2 properties for more than a couple of weeks.

The solicitor said we can complete a couple of weeks after exchanging, but we would have to sign a disclaimer stating that we ignored the advice of the solicitor by not doing it in the same day.

Can anyone give me any advice?

Cheers, Matt

tinkerbell84

We completed a month after exchange.

No reason whatsoever to do it on the same day.

Smashing

We exchanged on the Thurs, completed the next Friday. You can have any amount of time between as long as it is agreed in advance. My preference would be for sooner, but completing on the same day can be risky if someone starts mucking about at the last minute - you don't want it to all go tits up when you've already paid for and packed all your belongings into the moving lorry.

matt9713

Hi there, thanks for your reply

The solicitor justified it by saying that we leave ourselves open to the possibility that if the mortgage product became unavailable between exchange and completion, we would leave ourselves open to the possibility of having to cover costs. I think the likelyhood of that is pretty slim, but it's the thought of having to sign a disclaimer to say we've gone against their advice that worried me slightly.

matt9713

Also, am I right in thinking we wouldn't pay the deposit until the day before completion?

tinkerbell84

The deposit must be paid for exchange to happen

The rest of the money has to be there for completion.

As above, there is a MASSIVE RISK with doing it on the same day - if your buyer pulls out on the day, you have no sale on the day you were hoping to move. If you wait for contracts to be exchanged before packing, you don't have time to do it and get out!

matt9713

We're lucky in the fact that there is no chain as we are FTB's and the current vendor is moving to a rented place. I see your point though, I think I'll look to exchange this week if possible and advise to complete in 2 weeks.

Cozworth806

No reason to wait 2 weeks, 1 week is plenty as it takes 3 days to book money from lender, so possible compromise.

Given that you will want to move, do some jobs, sort your rented place out for the bond etc then I would say a months rents is well worth while ofr the time.

1399steve

We've just done virtually the same - moving from rented place to owning first property with overlap in between.

We planned to exchange 2 weeks before completion, but due to our lender being awkward about a reduction we had negotiated post-survey, exchange got put back by a week while the lender sorted out a revised mortgage offer. But because we had allowed the time between exchange and completion, we were still able to complete on the day we had planned for.

We also had 3 weeks of overlap which was unbelievably helpful as we were able to spend a couple of weeks cleaning and decorating the new place, then moved in with a few days left on the rented place to give us time to clean thoroughly to ensure deposit was returned.

barnaby-bear

matt9713 wrote: »

I'm in the process of buying a property, and have all the documents ready to sign. The solicitor has advised that as soon as we send in the signed documents we can proceed with exchanging contracts and completing. What stikes me as being strange is that they wanted to exchange and complete on the same day.

My understanding was that in most cases you would exchange and then complete a couple of weeks later. The current vendor wants to get everything legally binding ASAP and is wanting to proceed with exchanging this week, but if we do this then it means we would also be the legal owners of the property this week which is a bit sooner than we wanted. We've currently got one calender month left on our tenancy agreement and didn't want to have to be responsible for 2 properties for more than a couple of weeks.

The solicitor said we can complete a couple of weeks after exchanging, but we would have to sign a disclaimer stating that we ignored the advice of the solicitor by not doing it in the same day.

Can anyone give me any advice?

Cheers, Matt

It isn't that weird - it can help if there are deposit issues - from a legally binding point of view - exchange is legally binding.... maybe they just don't want to be responsible for two houses for that few weeks either... buyers are fairly sparse at the moment so you have a strong bargaining hand...

barnaby-bear

matt9713 wrote: »

Also, am I right in thinking we wouldn't pay the deposit until the day before completion?

Deposit is paid at exchange. One reason people exchange and complete in a single transaction is to pass the deposit down the chain or if someone doesn't have the funds to pay a deposit at exchange....