Notice for Completion Date

greatcrested

Rudi1990 said:

i’m a FTB and will have to give notice on my current rental property in due course. How much notice will I get on the completion date and is the date accurate?

You need to discuss/decide with your solicitor whether you want to

1) Exchange and Complete on the same day (pros and cons!), or

2) have a gap between the two

The decision also requires negotiation/agreement with everyone else in the chain. The Completion date is only irrevocably fixed at Exchange, so if 1) above, the date can change even the day before.

With 2), once you've Exchanged the Completion date is fixed so depending on the length of the gap (1 week? 2 weeks? more?) you have some time to plan, serve notice eyc.

Just want to give my current landlady as much notice as possible and preferably a minimum of a month as per my contract.

A calender month? A month tied in to your tenancy periods (might be up to 7 weeks)?

Assuming you have a periodic (rolling) tenancy and the contract specifies the notice (so a CPT - see below) then what exactly does the contract say?

Post 4: Ending/renewing an AST: what happens when a fixed term ends? How can a LL or tenant end a tenancy? What is a periodic tenancy?

saajan_12

Rudi1990 said:

i’m a FTB and will have to give notice on my current rental property in due course. How much notice will I get on the completion date and is the date accurate? 

It won't be accurate until you exchange. If you give notice before this, then you could still risk everything being delayed or falling through. So unless you can handle the risk of having to move out and find temporary accommodation / storage (tricky with kids and a house full), DON'T give notice until you exchange. 
Once you exchange, it will be accurate. 

So the notice period = gap between exchange & completion (plus any overlap time you want to move gradually). You can try to suggest a longer gap with the others in the chain, but it'll all be up for negotiation. 

Rudi1990 said:

Just want to give my current landlady as much notice as possible and preferably a minimum of a month as per my contract.
I haven’t received my mortgage offer yet but the underwriting has been completed and the valuation has been booked.

You need to check exactly what your tenancy notice period is - are you in a fixed term? break clause? statutory or contractual periodic tenancy? Your notice period may not be just a straightforward calendar month. 

Of course you can try to negotiate an early termination with the LL on a mutually convenient date, but they may refuse, in which case you're left with the contract. 

Thrugelmir

Rudi1990 said:

iampetesmith said:

I think we ended up exchanging on the Tuesday and completing on the Thursday so it was only a couple of days. We just paid the extra rent and had the keys to both houses for a few weeks so we could move all the stuff ourselves. The landlord had also given us notice earlier in the year as he wanted to sell it, but he let us stay there until our purchase went through.

Maybe I’ll chat directly with her once I have the mortgage offer through and try to arrange something mutually suitable

Might well aid your LL as the property is being sold. Is it on the market yet? 

Caitykinss

As others have said, don't give notice on your rental until after you have exchanged. At this point your completion date will be set. We exchanged on a Tuesday and completed the same Friday, so ended up having an overlap of just over 3 weeks. This was useful as it allowed us time to get some decorating done before moving furniture in, and gave us the freedom to move things across gradually. We didn't properly move in/van hire etc until about 10 days after completion. We then had more time to clean our rental properly. 

It's also worth trying to get the date as close to your rent payment date as possible (eg. we paid our rent from 12th-11th each month, rather than 1st-31st, so aimed for exchange to be in the few days before our final rent payment). This avoids any awkward 'part' months that you might need to negotiate payment for. You can request an ideal date for exchange/completion (although exchange won't happen until everyone's ready!). 

Rudi1990

Thrugelmir said:

Rudi1990 said:

iampetesmith said:

I think we ended up exchanging on the Tuesday and completing on the Thursday so it was only a couple of days. We just paid the extra rent and had the keys to both houses for a few weeks so we could move all the stuff ourselves. The landlord had also given us notice earlier in the year as he wanted to sell it, but he let us stay there until our purchase went through.

Maybe I’ll chat directly with her once I have the mortgage offer through and try to arrange something mutually suitable

Might well aid your LL as the property is being sold. Is it on the market yet? 

No, it’s not on the market yet, but maybe she feels it’s a bit early to market it, given I can stay until end of July.