Is 2-3 weeks reasonable between exchange and completion??

Treacle44

It's now been 7 months since we sold our house and had an offer accepted on one we're moving to. Despite various obstacles along the way (our buyer losing their buyer twice but both were rectified within 2 weeks, our buyer's property has a piece of unregistered land that has taken 3 months to register! etc etc). :mad:

We received our mortgage offer originally back in September and at that time we accepted that we would have to pay a mortgage redemption of around £2.5K. fast forward to this month and our mortgage deal ends 28Th February. We made it clear to our solicitor and our estate agent that because of this, although we are happy to exchange as soon as possible, we don't want to complete until 1st March to avoid having to pay this mortgage redemption.

Our solicitor agreed that is was a perfectly reasonable request, yet when I spoke to our estate agent yesterday, he said we are just waiting for land registry to return transfer of land documents and we are ready to exchange. He then proceeded to say "we're looking ok for the 12th hopefully" "the 12th of what?" I asked. He replied "February!!" I again explained that we had told him we don't want to complete until 1st March and he said well the bottom of the chain are requesting completion of 12th" Aaargh!!!

Surely our estate agent should be supporting us, is our request unreasonable? Should we stand our ground if the bottom of the chain starts threatening?

Thanks for any advice

pie81

2-3 weeks between exchange and completion sounds perfectly normal. Leaving aside your mortgage issue, usually people need time to pack, book removals, given notice on rentals (if they are at the bottom of the chain) etc.

Find out why the bottom of the chain are so insistent - if they have a really good reason then if you stand firm there is a risk the chain will collapse, but if it's just "we've waited ages, now we want to get on with it" then chances are they will wait a few more weeks.

Cissi

I completely agree with Pie81, 2-3 weeks is perfectly reasonable, and I also agree that your EA should be working for you, not "the bottom of the chain". In reality he probably just want to close the deal as quickly as possible now, to get his commission - but that isn't your problem and I think you should stick to your guns. The bottom of the chain isn't going to pull out after waiting all this time just because they're being given an extre couple of weeks between exchange and completion!

If the EA isn't helping, maybe you could go through your solicitor instead? Ours negotiated most similar details with the other party's solicitor (the EA was particularly useless and got things like completion date completely wrong even after they'd been agreed). Try taking a firm stand: "at this point, after all this delay, it will cost us £2.5k more to complete in February so unless you're prepared to carry this cost we're not willing to complete before March 1st". Make it clear that you're still keen to exchange ASAP and see how they react - you can always back down later if absolutely necessary.

G_M

Ignore the EA. It's the solicitors who draw up the contract which specifies the Completion date. It's the solicitors who speak to each other to agree the Completion date.

The EA is just a 'facilitator' at this stage, though often just adds an uneccessary layer of communication leading to confusion.

4 weeks is common. 2-3 is acceptable. Depends partly on legal processes (again, solicitor not EA) and partly on what the parties involved want (ie you want 4 weeks.

Speak to your solicitor and instruct him accordingly. (He works for you!)