Our vendor is messing us about - what can we do?

asparagusnextleft

We are relocating back up North to be nearer family and had an offer accepted on a property at the end of April. It is a very straightforward purchase, no chain involved and the vendors said at the time that they would just move out into rented property and were happy for things to be dealt with quickly.

Everything has been done and all we need to do now is exchange and complete. We said several weeks back that we wanted to complete on June 30th, then a week before that date the vendors asked if we would complete on 8th July instead. We said that was fine as it was only an extra week. Now, however, our solicitor has received a letter from theirs saying that they now want to complete at the end of July. No reason has been given.

This is no good for us at all, we need to move out of our flat and are all packed and ready to go. We need to be living in the new area for work reasons and I feel like these people are just messing with our lives. Does anyone know what we can do? Does anyone have experience of this? It's not like we are moving just down the road and life goes on, this is a major thing yet they are just messing us about. It has been ongoing for over two months now which in my opinion is long enough for a straightforward purchase. We have done everything we need to do to exchange - the contract has been signed and the deposit has been sent to the solicitors.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

sonastin

Have you exchanged contracts or just signed ready to exchange once a date for completion is agreed?

asparagusnextleft

We've signed and it's all ready for exchange. Should be exchanging on Monday.

Well - after a lot of fraught phone calls today, the vendor has confirmed that they will vacate on the 8th. It turns out that they decided to buy somewhere, not rent so we have ended up in a chain that we did not know about. This is a bit annoying as one of the reasons we went for this particular property over others was that there was no chain. But, they've confirmed that they will get out so all is not lost! We'll have to wait and see what happens next week.