Completion deadline? A good idea?

Bil2

Dear all-

We have recently accepted an offer on our apartment from an FTB. My partner currently works in another city and commutes by train. As I'll be starting a new job the same city as my partner at the start of October, I'll be commuting as well. Our joint commuting costs will be £500(!) per month. The journey is also about 2hrs each way...

therefore, we want to move asap!!!


We've informed the buyer that we will move into rented accommodation if she manages to complete her buying process before we've found a place to buy. To speed things along, should we set a proposed completion date?

We accepted her offer on Tuesday the 19th of Sept. Would a completion date (exchange of contracts) of Monday the 30th of Oct be too soon? (our monthly train passes for Oct will expire on this date). Our apartment is only one year old, so I doubt that there'll be too many problems picked up by a survey- in addition, it has 9ys of NHBC insurance left.

She's currently sorting out her mortgage and has contacted a conveyancer, so things have been set in motion. Do people actually move on the completion date? Our apartment is a new build, so we don't have experience of the 'normal' way of doing these things!

Should we even set a completion date in the first place? Are there any disadvantages (other than things not being done on time!) such as putting off the buyer? As far as I am aware, she is keen to move in and currently lives with her parents so her moving date is flexible.

I'll be thankful for any advice.

MyHouse75

Me and my husband are FTB and put in our offer on a house on 12 August. Offer gor accepted the same day. We had our mortgage application sent off to the lender a couple of days later and found a solicitor a week later. So we didn't waste any time and thought that everything would start moving fast....now 1,5months later we still haven't had a final mortgage decision eventhough we had a mortgage agreement in principle at the time of putting the offer in.

I think it's quite a tight deadline you're giving your buyer, but not impossible. However, even if the buyer gets things moving quickly a lot depends on the mortgage lender (some are quicker than others, I think our lender is the slowest of them all), surveyor and solicitors. Also, what is the deadline really for, what will you do if the buyer doesn't meet the deadline? If you then decline the buyers offer for not having met your deadline the buyer will lose survey money and you will start the whole process of looking for a new buyer again.

Bil2

Thanks MyHouse75-

Perhaps a completion deadline isn't exactly what we want after all! We wouldn't want to lose the buyer if she didn't complete on time, but we would still like to state when we would like the process to be finished (the buyer would not incur any penalties if she is late).

Anyone know how we should do this? Do we tell the estate agent or do we tell our conveyancer to contact the buyer's conveyancer?

JennyW_2

I dont think it's really fair to set a deadline as there could be delays from any party in the chain however you could communicate your request to complete by a certain day through your EA who will inform your buyer's solicitor and your buyer (assuming she is happy to move as quickly too?). We requested a completed date in June which was agreed by all, however we didn't complete until August.

As smooth and as trouble free you may think your chain is, things can always crop up delaying the process. For example we had a FTB behind us and the searches took 7 weeks as well as delays in getting a mortgage offer etc etc etc....then when we were almost due to complete, our buyer's solicitor started to raise queries over windows, extension etc requesting paperwork, which of course caused more delays.

In theory we should've had a really quick exchange but our process from start to finish took 5 long months.

Debt_Free_Chick

Once you exchange you'll have a completion deadline. Before exchange there's too much at the mercy of others e.g. local authority searches are taking up to 8 weeks in some areas. It's simply not feasible to ask a buyer to commit to a deadline which is partly dependent on the actions of others, outside of their control.

I think anything you ask them to agree to is not contractually binding. The only binding agreement is the completion date set, when you exchange.

HTH