Buying our first house - Long stop Date issues

NameUnavailable · 20 September 2021 at 7:48PM

GaryL84 said:

Irishpearce26 said:

30/07/21 – EICR completed at our expense.

Of course its at your expense, you want an electrical report you pay for it.
We're both really upset and disheartened by the continuing delays and insistance by the vendor that we agree to pay his rent for however long it takes to complete. We arent willing to put ourselves at risk of being in breach of contract and at this point extending our mortgage offer validity seems pointless as without any confidence in a completion date, we'd still be at risk if we exchanged now without the Long Stop Date in place.

Why would you be at risk of breaching the contract, if the vendor wants to exchange a date needs to be set for completion. Also why doesn't the vendor have a long stop with the developer, as they have moved the planned date he is within his right to do so.

The EICR point was made because, I dont know about you but, I want to know the house im living in is safe. They'd never had any inspection done nor had any records of gas safety checks. Both were highlighted by the survey.

Every survey will suggest gas and electrics are checked. It's !!!!!! covering. Obviously if you want that then you should have to pay for it, as it's not a legal requirement for the vendor to provide it.

The obvious answer to your problem is that you sit tight, don't exchange until the vendor can confirm a completion date. If your mortgage offer expires you just apply to extend it - unless your circumstances change that shouldn't be an issue (although I guess that the exact same deal might no longer be available from your lender).

AdrianC · 20 September 2021 at 9:06PM

GaryL84 said:

The EICR point was made because, I dont know about you but, I want to know the house im living in is safe. They'd never had any inspection done nor had any records of gas safety checks.

Nor are they required to.

How often will you pay to have them done once you live there...?

Both were highlighted by the survey.

Standard backside-covering. EVERY survey will flag that.

turns out the consumer unit is missing RCD protection which is well worth noting in my book

But given how important it is to you, you already knew that from a brief glance at the CU on your viewing before you even offered, right?

It'll need replacing with an 18th edition unit.

No, it doesn't NEED replacing.
You may want to replace it for your own piece-of-mind, but that's different.

As far as the breach of contract remark, they want to exchange immediately with completion on notice. That means there is no date for completion. its whenever their builder serves notice which could be at any time. If we exchange as you know we are legally bound to buy the property, however if when they issue notice to complete we dont have a valid mortgage offer, we cant proceed and such will be in breach of contract paying a fine for each day that passes outside of the 10 day completion window.

The vendor does have a long stop with their builder, but its 6 months from the given build finish date, which last we heard was estimated November - thus their long stop is April 2022.

Welcome to the joys of being below an off-plan new-build in a chain... even without the added layers of complexity of a pandemic and the government telling a large proportion of builders they aren't welcome here any more and the government telling our major trading partners we want to add extra complexity to trade and with a major infrastructure project swallowing supplies hand-over-fist.

Really, it's a wonder things aren't worse.

Aspiration · 20 September 2021 at 11:43PM

I don’t think you are being unreasonable and I doubt you’d be able to exchange without a long stop in place? The solicitors will make sure you can actually complete and if it goes past the 15th Dec you will not and likely lose a large amount of money.