Sellers setting Long Stop completion date

ChrisWelch0709

We have just sent our contracts back and sent our deposit for the house, but today we received an email from the seller's solicitors saying 

‘We have now checked the new property is anticipated completion for 18th December with a two-month longstop date

 Completion being on 10 working days’ notice’.

What rights do we have on this? Can we ask the sellers to move out and find other property whilst their "New Build" gets built?

Chris

princeofpounds

You can ask. They may or may not agree, and you might have to threaten pulling out.

Is it going to be a real problem for you? Two months plus two months is not the craziest timeline in the world of housebuying, if you are exchanged then there wouldn't be much to worry about.

ChrisWelch0709

Hi, Thanks for your response. Baring in mind our offer got accepted on the 18th of July. To now find out we could yet be not moved in until February, this is for sure a problem for us yes.

princeofpounds

OK, so tell them through the EA that you don't want to wait that long, so they need to complete with you earlier, or else you will pull out. Because that's the only leverage you have.

Then see what happens. They may comply. They may negotiate. They may well pull out themselves - your demand will place a significant extra cost on them.

FinallyStoppedLurking

We faced a similar issue. 

Your leverage is the threat to pull out. The problem is that if you pulled out and started the search again it's unlikely you would complete any sooner. Potentially you could complete even later (and go past the stamp duty saving date). I was very frustrated at the time but have come to accept that we are just having to wait. 

pinkteapot

Make sure your mortgage offer doesn’t expire before 18th Feb.

ChrisWelch0709

pinkteapot said:

Make sure your mortgage offer doesn’t expire before 18th Feb.

Thanks for this, we have just checked and our offer does expire on the 7th Feb, which again is bad news.

ChrisWelch0709

FinallyStoppedLurking said:

We faced a similar issue. 

Your leverage is the threat to pull out. The problem is that if you pulled out and started the search again it's unlikely you would complete any sooner. Potentially you could complete even later (and go past the stamp duty saving date). I was very frustrated at the time but have come to accept that we are just having to wait. 

Did you threaten to pull out? What was the outcome, did you gain anything on this?

ChrisWelch0709

princeofpounds said:

OK, so tell them through the EA that you don't want to wait that long, so they need to complete with you earlier, or else you will pull out. Because that's the only leverage you have.

Then see what happens. They may comply. They may negotiate. They may well pull out themselves - your demand will place a significant extra cost on them.

We do want to threaten to pull out and get this sorted, but don't want to run the risk of the sellers pulling out

princeofpounds

ChrisWelch0709 said:

princeofpounds said:

OK, so tell them through the EA that you don't want to wait that long, so they need to complete with you earlier, or else you will pull out. Because that's the only leverage you have.

Then see what happens. They may comply. They may negotiate. They may well pull out themselves - your demand will place a significant extra cost on them.

We do want to threaten to pull out and get this sorted, but don't want to run the risk of the sellers pulling out

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. 

However, given what you've just said about your mortgage offer, it does give you a middle path forward. You can point out to the vendor's EA that your mortgage offer runs out before the long stop date. Therefore you cannot commit to the proposed dates as you cannot be certain of completion if they run to the very end (which is quite possible).

Being a third-party constraint, it's less likely that this will be seen as a spurious justification and the vendors will have to consider it more seriously. You might then be able to negotiate a few weeks earlier (don't agree to the 7th, just in case there are completion delays for any reason) at least. The vendors will know that they have at most a couple of weeks of storage and B&B fees to deal with, rather than months of it.

ChrisWelch0709

princeofpounds said:

ChrisWelch0709 said:

princeofpounds said:

OK, so tell them through the EA that you don't want to wait that long, so they need to complete with you earlier, or else you will pull out. Because that's the only leverage you have.

Then see what happens. They may comply. They may negotiate. They may well pull out themselves - your demand will place a significant extra cost on them.

We do want to threaten to pull out and get this sorted, but don't want to run the risk of the sellers pulling out

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. 

However, given what you've just said about your mortgage offer, it does give you a middle path forward. You can point out to the vendor's EA that your mortgage offer runs out before the long stop date. Therefore you cannot commit to the proposed dates as you cannot be certain of completion if they run to the very end (which is quite possible).

Being a third-party constraint, it's less likely that this will be seen as a spurious justification and the vendors will have to consider it more seriously. You might then be able to negotiate a few weeks earlier (don't agree to the 7th, just in case there are completion delays for any reason) at least. The vendors will know that they have at most a couple of weeks of storage and B&B fees to deal with, rather than months of it.

As expected! We dont want to accpet a LongStop date if I'm honest, we want a fixed completion date before end of the year.