Notice on Rental & Exchange Date

ChewyyBacca

Hi All,

Unexpectedly all our enquiries have been answered on 23 Dec25. When the offices open in the New Year, I guess we should be talking about the exchange & completion date.
Survey is booked for the first week of Jan 2025. Realistically Im looking at end Jan or begining Feb 2025 as completion date.

Our AST states ''The Tenant must give notice of no less than one month, such notice to expire the

day before a Rent Payment Day or on the final day of the Initial Term.'' 

We are in rolling tenancy & rent due to increase from February 2025.

When should I ideally give notice? I dont want a month between exchange & completion, rather 4-5 days, since from exchange onwards I will be responsible for the new property. Without talking to the solicitor, I dont want to give notice on 1 Jan 25. 

Based on termination clause, it seems like notice has to be calendar month 1st of month to the next. Am i interpreting it correct?

p00hsticks

On what day of the month is your 'Rent Payment Date' ?
Would you have somewhere to stay / store your goods if you ended your tenancy but hadn't yet completed ?

ChewyyBacca

p00hsticks said:

On what day of the month is your 'Rent Payment Date' ?
Would you have somewhere to stay / store your goods if you ended your tenancy but hadn't yet completed ?

Rent Payment Date is 1st of the month
We do not have alternate place to stay or store our goods unfortunately

eddddy

ChewyyBacca said:

When should I ideally give notice? I dont want a month between exchange & completion, rather 4-5 days, since from exchange onwards I will be responsible for the new property. Without talking to the solicitor, I dont want to give notice on 1 Jan 25. 

The problem is that, until you exchange contracts, there is no guarantee that your purchase will happen.

So it might be that you give notice before exchange, then the seller delays the sale or decides not to sell after all.

To avoid that risk, you have to wait until after you exchange before you give notice. So either you ask for a long period between exchange and completion. or you have an overlap when you're still renting but also own your new property.

swingaloo

I would be waiting to see what the survey throws up before you give notice.

p00hsticks

ChewyyBacca said:

p00hsticks said:

On what day of the month is your 'Rent Payment Date' ?
Would you have somewhere to stay / store your goods if you ended your tenancy but hadn't yet completed ?

We do not have alternate place to stay or store our goods unfortunately

In that case you don't really have an option other than not handing in your notice until you've exchanged contracts.
As edddy says ,that means either a gap of at least a month between exchange or completion, or paying both rent and a mortgage for a few weeks.     

The cost of short term alternative acommodation and storage would almost certainly be more than a few weeks rent where you are now. And assuming that you are moving within the same area, an overalp also avoids the stress of having to completely move out in a single day. 

Voyager2002

ChewyyBacca said:

 I dont want a month between exchange & completion, rather 4-5 days, since from exchange onwards I will be responsible for the new property.

Insurance to cover this risk is very reasonably priced.

Myci85

What is your relationship like with your landlord? We were in this situation but had a good communication with landlady throughout. We ended up exchanging and completing just after the date to give 1 months notice by rent due date, but had foreseen it might happen that way, and had agreed with our landlady that we would still give a full month's notice but it didn't have to tie in with rent date. 

I would initially recommend discussing with your landlord if they may be willing to be flexible if kept in the loop. But absolutely don't give notice until you've exchanged. Better to have a longer overlap (we were very grateful for the time to decorate new house before moving in and cleaning up rental after moving) than end up with nowhere to go if sale falls through.

SandyShores

We bought a new build and didn't give notice until we had the two week move-in notice.  Very glad we didn't because we were due to move in April 2020, but due to covid never got the move-in notice until 3 months later.  It meant our total notice was six weeks, but we handed over the keys so didn't have to pay bills or council tax past the month end.  It was really handy being able to take our time moving and we hired a self drive van to move ourselves.

chanz4

It can mean a no rush day move in as well

HelpfulLittleHelper

Its much more relaxed to have a bit of buffer between, no need to have everything in a van and ready to go on day 1. Take your time getting stuff over, give the old rental a good clean etc without pressure. Worth it to have a bit of overlap!