How soon to exchange?

Mineral1

What's an acceptable amount of time between exchange and completion at the minute? Our solicitor says to leave it as close to the proposed completion date as possible, or even exchange and complete the same day, which is about three weeks away but the chain are keen to exchange asap. We are FTBs. Covid rider has been drafted but not sure our solicitor has much appetite for it.

greatcrested

Pre-Covid, 2 weeks was a sort of ball-park gap, giving enough time to make arrangements

Early in Covid, simultaneous exchange/completion became the norm to avoid the issue of shielding or illness making a buyer/seller unable to Complete as per contract.

This has relaxed somewhat so it's up to the various parties to agree. I guess a week is an 'acceptable'compromise....

onylon

The risk is that your mortgage provider decides to withdraw the product you planned to use and then leave you unable to fund your purchase eg. you planned for 90% LTV and then find that only 85% LTV products are available. A standard Covid rider should protect your deposit and let you back out of the sale if this happened.

I sold my flat last month with less than 1 week between exchange and completion but I would have liked longer to pack etc.

Moneyminded

I exchanged and completed on the same day and found that very stressful, personally if/ when I ever buy again I would hope to exchange at least a week before completion so that I could be confident to make arrangements for moving. If your chain is all eager to exchange asap, what are you comfortable with? 

greatcrested

onylon said:

The risk is that your mortgage provider decides to withdraw the product you planned to use and then leave you unable to fund your purchase eg. you planned for 90% LTV and then find that only 85% LTV products are available. A standard Covid rider should protect your deposit and let you back out of the sale if this happened.

I sold my flat last month with less than 1 week between exchange and completion but I would have liked longer to pack etc.

This practically never happens after Excange, and where it does it is because of things like discovering a fraudulant application (eg exagerating their salary, planning tolet the property not live in it etc), not because the product applied for, and granted, has been withdrawn.

badger09

We exchanged 18th Dec & would have been happy to complete within a week, but solicitors’ Christmas closure made that difficult & removal firms were fully booked weeks ahead. Completion is on 8th, (lockdown allowing). 

When/if we exchange on our purchase, we’ll gladly do it all same day as we’ll be in temp accommodation. 

hazyjo

As you're FTBs I'd definitely try to do it on the same day. Why can you not all complete sooner if you're ready to exchange now?

badger09

From OP’s comment ‘which is about 3 weeks away’, I suspect they not quite as close as they think they are

Mineral1

Trying not to give too much personal detail away in case other people are reading it, we want completion as soon as possible but the top of the chain cant complete until a specific date within w/c 25th Jan. Realistically I cant see what would change between now and 3 weeks time that would put us in breach of contract as we will have a covid rider in place that's pretty comprehensive. But what do I know?

Continental

Our buyer was about to exchange in mid-December and then suddenly wanted to send an
electrician round to do an inspection (which really should have been done around the time she arranged a survey in early November. Both sets of solicitors were due to close between 19th December and 4th January, only having a presence in the office (or working from home to tie up loose ends). 

The electrician couldn’t apparently go round until Saturday 19th December and we were peeved that we wouldn’t have exchanged until the New Year. However, on 22nd December due to much pressure on the solicitors, exchange did take place and we complete on 15 January at the buyer’s request. We have already moved to our new home, 3 hours away.

Unfortunately my spouse collapsed with kidney stones the next day, coming out of hospital after a stent was inserted on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately he caught the Coronavirus whilst in hospital and he’s quite ill. I’m not feeling quite right and I’m still awaiting test results. We still have some large items of furniture in the house and we’ve had to ask our estate agent to send a ‘man and van’ team to empty the house for us and take it to a storage unit. We originally planned to rent a van and do it ourselves but we are just not up to it. So even if it was a one week delay or two weeks between exchange and completion this Coronavirus can still mess up your plans, as it has done with us

Good Luck with your move 

Mineral1

Continental said:

Our buyer was about to exchange in mid-December and then suddenly wanted to send an
electrician round to do an inspection (which really should have been done around the time she arranged a survey in early November. Both sets of solicitors were due to close between 19th December and 4th January, only having a presence in the office (or working from home to tie up loose ends). 

The electrician couldn’t apparently go round until Saturday 19th December and we were peeved that we wouldn’t have exchanged until the New Year. However, on 22nd December due to much pressure on the solicitors, exchange did take place and we complete on 15 January at the buyer’s request. We have already moved to our new home, 3 hours away.

Unfortunately my spouse collapsed with kidney stones the next day, coming out of hospital after a stent was inserted on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately he caught the Coronavirus whilst in hospital and he’s quite ill. I’m not feeling quite right and I’m still awaiting test results. We still have some large items of furniture in the house and we’ve had to ask our estate agent to send a ‘man and van’ team to empty the house for us and take it to a storage unit. We originally planned to rent a van and do it ourselves but we are just not up to it. So even if it was a one week delay or two weeks between exchange and completion this Coronavirus can still mess up your plans, as it has done with us

Good Luck with your move 

Sorry to hear that, that sounds really stressful. It sounds like you're managing to deal with it quite well considering!