Buyer is delaying completion date!

sunflower1980

Hi all,
I just wanted a little bit of advise and just wanted to see if this is the norm!
So in October we made the decision to sell our house and buy a new one. We are now in February and I keep getting told that its taking so long because the solicitors have been really busy due to the stamp duty freeze and coronavirus.

We have finally got to the point where we have discussing a completion date so we suggested 2 weeks to our buyer (as I thought this was the norm) and they said they needed it to be at least a month as they needed to give a months notice on their rented house.
I was told they would discuss it and get back to us with a date but it has now been 6 days. My solicitor has apparently chased this but to no avail.
Do you think I've given the buyer enough time to mull it over? Also could I get my estate agent to call the buyer or that seen as too forward?
Thanks

Chop-D

When we recently moved we found the estate agent to be the best for sorting dates. We agreed it all through the agent then all just let our solicitors know and they worked to those dates.

hazyjo

Getting deja vu - didn't someone post this earlier? Perhaps just similar.
Definitely use the EA. It's what they're there for.

MaryNB

Is it a simple month's notice or a month from the rent due date? If you're going to be impacted by the SDLT holiday I would push them for a date. I can't see any reason it takes 6 days to make a decision. They should know how their notice works and should know if they can afford a month overlap. 

At the moment a lot of people are keeping the time between exchange and completion very short due to concerns about what could happen between exchange and completion - e.g. buyer is furloughed and loses mortgage offer. I was renting but exchanged the day before completion (was supposed to be a week but exchange was delayed). I had budgeted for the overlap. 

sunflower1980

Thanks for your responses. I’ll contact the estate agent and see if they can chase her then. I did think it was a little long to wait, just to pick a date.
I just want to get it resolved as each day waiting is just torture!

Seashell517

Buyer would be better off with some time after completion with the rental still available, so as to be able to move across and clean up at the end of the tenancy at their leisure, IMHO. Perhaps suggest that to them?

Indigo_and_Violet

If it's really important to you, you could consider making an offer to the buyers to incentivise them to complete sooner? 
We had the reverse (seller wanted a long completion after an extended sale process where we got fed up of paying rent and legal fees for them to ignore emails). Eventually, we told the agent that if it went after a certain date we would need to look at reducing the purchase price to reflect the additional costs. If they are worried about paying rent and mortgage in the same month then offering to split the costs might work? No moral reason you have to, but potentially worth it to speed things along. 

Mahsroh

Seashell517 said:

Buyer would be better off with some time after completion with the rental still available, so as to be able to move across and clean up at the end of the tenancy at their leisure, IMHO. Perhaps suggest that to them?

Exactly what I thought. 

Plus, if the buyer is concerned about doubling up on mortgage payments / rent it might be worth them checking this as it may not be an issue. 

Rent is often paid in advance whereas first mortgage payment taken a full month after completion. So they may find even with a 2 / 3 week overlap that they still only have 1 rent / mortgage payment within each monthly pay cycle, if that makes sense.

Thrugelmir

Perhaps it also involves booking time off work. Not simply just giving the landlord notice. Are they ready to exchange is another question, or has something occurred. 

sunflower1980

Thanks guys! Still no response from the buyer so got the estate agent to chase her up now. Fingers crossed for a response.