Giving Notice Before Exchange

cdp2879

Looking for a few more opinions.  We're at the tail end of a chain-free purchase.  We're FTB, buying what's currently an empty BTL.  The paperwork has been signed, the mortgage docs signed, searches are all back and most of the enquires answered.  There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.  It feels like we're very close now.

We have to give 2 months notice for our current rental, and it has to be on the 1st of the month.  I'm very tempted to give notice next week on the 1st of July, meaning we have the rental until the end of August.  Otherwise, even if we exchanged and completed the week after next, I'd have to wait nearly an entire month before I could give notice on 1 August, having this property until end of September.  We know we'll have two properties for a certain amount of time (which is fine by us, as moving with two small kids means we can do it slowly), but would like to limit that time as much as possible.  One less month saves us nearly £2,000.

Would you lean into the risk that the last few queries would be sorted in two months?

user1977

cdp2879 said:

There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.

Would your lender be prepared to waive them? What are the ones you wouldn't be prepared to waive?

cdp2879

user1977 said:

cdp2879 said:

There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.

Would your lender be prepared to waive them? What are the ones you wouldn't be prepared to waive?

I wouldn't not waive all of them, particularly any the lender may care about (but I think most of those have been addressed anyway).  But one of the remaining is requesting a detailed statements of how the service charge has been spent, as the management pack only included the total (reasonable) amount.  Another is whether they'd pay the outstanding bill for their share of ongoing building works - as its £116, I'd rather pay it than my rent, and the solicitor doesn't expect them to agree anyway.

cdp2879

user1977 said:

cdp2879 said:

There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.

Would your lender be prepared to waive them? What are the ones you wouldn't be prepared to waive?

Also, the question isn’t whether I could/should waive enquiries. The preference would be that everything is sorted. 

The question is whether I should consider giving notice given the stage we’re at in the process. 

Thanks!

Wes121708

I'd say no unless you're landlord is very reasonable and if anything was delayed they would let you stay on. Two months is a longtime but you never know what might happen.
I always imagine the worst, say you handed it in and for some reason you didn't complete within the next two months, do you have somewhere you could stay and somewhere to put your belongings? 
We were in the same predicament but even though our solicitors had our deposit ready for exchange we didn't hand our notice in until we had exchanged but then we have a family of four and nowhere to go. 

GrumpyDil

Can I ask why two months notice?

Are you exercising a break clause as standard tenant notice, assuming a monthly tenancy and outside of a fixed term is one month.

cdp2879

Yes, it’s a break clause.  It’s not a monthly tenancy with a one month notice. It’s the third consecutive 2 year lease that we’re ending 6 months early. 

We are also a family of four, but we do have somewhere to stay if needed (and no furniture as it’s a furnished flat). We’ve been great tenants for 5 1/2 years, so unless they had already lined up a new tenant, I’d say there’s a window for us to retract our notice. 

user1977

cdp2879 said:

user1977 said:

cdp2879 said:

There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.

Would your lender be prepared to waive them? What are the ones you wouldn't be prepared to waive?

Also, the question isn’t whether I could/should waive enquiries. The preference would be that everything is sorted. 

The question is whether I should consider giving notice given the stage we’re at in the process. 

Yes, but the question is also whether these are enquiries which you can waive. If your solicitor (wearing their "lender's solicitor" hat) needs satisfactory answers in order to use the mortgage funds, then you're not buying until that happens.

snazzlebee

We had a two-month notice period too, and gambled with ending our tenancy. 

We knew that if it ended up going beyond our tenancy, we'd be able to move in with family for a short while until we got over the line. We also calculated that putting our stuff into storage for a few weeks would be cheaper than paying the rent and bills for an extra month. 

But we'd also made a decision that as this property we were buying was our dream house, if it all fell through we would go back into renting, thus not needing to stay with parents for a long time while trying to find another house to buy. And so we had a fall-back option in the back of our minds, in case the worst happened.

We got lucky, we complete on Monday and there's just 2 weeks between us removing our furniture and the end of our tenancy. It's still cutting it fine though!

cdp2879

user1977 said:

cdp2879 said:

user1977 said:

cdp2879 said:

There are just 4 or 5 remaining enquires, a few of which I'm prepared to waive if necessary.

Would your lender be prepared to waive them? What are the ones you wouldn't be prepared to waive?

Also, the question isn’t whether I could/should waive enquiries. The preference would be that everything is sorted. 

The question is whether I should consider giving notice given the stage we’re at in the process. 

Yes, but the question is also whether these are enquiries which you can waive. If your solicitor (wearing their "lender's solicitor" hat) needs satisfactory answers in order to use the mortgage funds, then you're not buying until that happens.

Yes, obviously, thank you. But again, whether or not to waive them has nothing to do with whether or not I give notice. 

cdp2879

snazzlebee said:

We had a two-month notice period too, and gambled with ending our tenancy. 

We knew that if it ended up going beyond our tenancy, we'd be able to move in with family for a short while until we got over the line. We also calculated that putting our stuff into storage for a few weeks would be cheaper than paying the rent and bills for an extra month. 

But we'd also made a decision that as this property we were buying was our dream house, if it all fell through we would go back into renting, thus not needing to stay with parents for a long time while trying to find another house to buy. And so we had a fall-back option in the back of our minds, in case the worst happened.

We got lucky, we complete on Monday and there's just 2 weeks between us removing our furniture and the end of our tenancy. It's still cutting it fine though!

Thanks. Sounds like our situation is the same. I’m leaning towards leaning into the risk, but will see where things sit on Thursday morning.