Agreeing a completion date

Dinah93

I would really appreciate some advice on our first house purchase.

Background: We first made the offer at the start of Febuary, which was accepted (at 2.6% below asking price), however the vendor hadn't found a house to move to at that time so things moved quite slowly, we first had contact from her solicitor in mid March. We had both the survey and the electrical periodical done, both raised a few issues ammounting to about £10,000 of work, none of it is in the 'house falling down' type category, but it will need doing. We did not ask for any money to be knocked off as a result of these problems coming to light, no house is perfect unless its a new build. From when we made the offer we asked the solicitor and her estate agent to keep us up to date on developments and to give us a proposed exchange/completion date as early as possible as we needed to arrange for the bulk of our deposit to be sent from my H2Bs dad who does not live in the UK and it takes about a week to transfer. The deposit is our wedding present. He runs a very successful company and is away on business a lot.

Now: I get an email on Friday telling us the completion date will be the 27th April, as 'this is the date the chain has always been working towards'. (Its only a chain of 3 - if 33% of the chain have no idea this is the proposed completion date I think its a push to say we've been working towards it) H2Bs dad is in Asia atm and won't be back until mid May. We have never, ever been told that the completion date is the 27th April, if we had been we could have got the deposit transfered before he left. He gets a much, much better interest rate than we do, and the exchange rate is poor atm, so we saw no reason to transfer before he left. In hindsight I guess we should have, but this is our first property purchase and given the vendor has been in no rush up until now we didn't imagine things would suddenly start moving! He can't transfer it online as it is in a building society (with a cute little passbook thing he has to take in and the cashier stamps - I didnt know those still existed!) and he has to go to the branch in person. The vendor is now spitting blood that we won't agree to the 27th April, and the estate agent is making noises to suggest she'll put the property back on the market.

How do I handle this, without rudely saying 'if you had told us this date a week or ten days ago we could have worked to it no issue, but now we can't really do anything!' and without loosing the house. I can see why the vendor is angry if she has been working towards this date, but we really should have been told if this date has been set in stone for so long.

Sorry for the ramble, I just don't know how to handle this.

blacksmith1980

Hi Dinah

This sounds very unfair and if your solicitor has not been notified of a completion date then you have every right to be a bit miffed. The trouble is (as we are finding out too), there aren't really any guidelines of time between exchange and completion. Have you exchanged contracts yet? In my experience you should reasonably expect 28 days between exchange and completion as that is usuually about the speed your solicitor and mortgage lender move.

If you haven't exchanged yet then i would say it is almost impossible to exchange and complete on the 27th.

With regards to finding another buyer, unless the property is hugely sought after then i would say this is a bit of an empty threat. For the buyer to find another buyer will add another month minimum to 27th April so you are in the best position. In case they haven't noticed, the property market isn't exactly booming at the moment.

My advice to you would be to contact your solcitior, ask their advice and then agree with the vendor. No-one wants to pull out or have to find another buyer so i'm sure you can come to an agreement. Late deadlines and threats like that though really don't help the situation.

Dinah93

Thanks for the reply.

No we haven't exhanged yet - she wants to do it all on the same day.

The property was on the market 4 months before we offered (it dropped £10k in price in that time) so I doubt she'd find someone to buy it and complete within a month!

[Deleted User]

With respect, get your solicitor to tell them in no uncertain terms to stick this up their !!!!.

Your vendors are bullying you and your solicitor should be sticking up for you. If the completion date suggested isn't good for you, refuse it and your solicitor will argue for one that IS good.

Your vendors won't pull out - they would be muppets to do so now that you've reached completion and for such a pathetic issue. There needs to be compromise.

We've found ourselves in a similar situation. Our vendor's EA called us and said 'just checking you're happy to complete on 6th May' (which we weren't). After digging some more, it turns out that the people above us are buying from a couple who live in Canada, and they'd booked their flights back to move without anyone contacting us or our FTB below us to see if we could do these dates. We're now kicking up a bit of a fuss about this - we don't see how a completion date could be 'agreed' with half of the chain actually agreeing.

Stick to your guns and get your solicitor to fight them.

Chinkle

Hold your ground. You've been patient, now they have to. Work out what would be a convenient date for you and propose that.

They aren't going to pull out at this stage, it is an empty threat.