Choosing a date for completion

penguine

Sorry if this is a bit of an obvious question but this is the first time I've purchased property and I'm not from the UK originally.

We're about to buy a house and expect to exchange contracts early next week. We are in the middle of moving money from various savings accounts and ISAs and will have the money for the deposit by the end of this week. We're in the process of moving the rest of the funds we'll need for completion, but have been told it could take 7-10 days for some of this to get into our current account.

We only learned last Wednesday that the sellers want to complete by the 30th because their mortgage offer is about to expire (we are their second buyers, the first one fell through just before exchange because of a problem with the property he was selling). This is clearly not our problem but we'd like to help them out if possible.

Is the completion date fixed at the time we exchange contracts? We obviously can't commit to a particular date if we don't know when we'll have the money ready, but we don't want to delay the exchange of contracts.

Thanks in advance.

PasturesNew

The completion date firstly requires the solicitor to have checked everything is in place. But once you come down to choosing that it's a decision between you and everybody else in your chain to agree. It has to be a normal working Monday to Friday (never weekends or bank holidays).

It would be cheaper (removals vans etc) to be on a Tue/Wed, but people often move on a Friday and take one day off work.

Given the complete freedom of choice I'd choose a Tuesday/Wednesday (get the van cheaper) and also have the rest of the week when shops are open to buy things I wanted/needed and didn't realise until that minute. Also, if you complete on a Friday you might have a solicitor query the next morning and you can't get hold of them until the following Monday, so if possible mid weeks are good times to move.

If you are in a chain, it's most likely people will all want a Friday. If people with kids are in the chain they might prefer a date that coincides with a school holiday.

But it's a date you help to choose.

want2beMF

I am by no means an expert but have recently completed on a purchase and so might be able to help you here.

You will need to set a completion date on exchange and normally this is abt 2-4 weeks from exchange (based on timeline given to me by my solicitor). But this can often be varied (shorter or longer) and sometimes pple exchange and complete on the same day.

Like you, we were in a similar position of pooling together our funds from various savings accounts (and even from our overseas accounts).

I am not sure where you got 7-10 days and how you are counting it but perhaps I could help my providing my rough timeline: 3-5 days from money to shift from 1 account to another and then another 3-5 days to reach solicitor.

Do remember to budget another 3-5 days when the money reaches your current account to transfer the money to your solicitor as sometimes pple tend to forget that there is this "time lag". Also, if you want a faster process, I think you can do a same day transfer to your solicitor's account (CHAPS???) but this is not free as most banks will charge abt £20???

HTH...

penguine

One of our ISA providers said it would be 7-10 days to get us the money. I imagine they were playing it safe so we wouldn't complain if it really does take that long. My solicitor has said they prefer telegraphic transfer.

want2beMF

penguine wrote: »

One of our ISA providers said it would be 7-10 days to get us the money. I imagine they were playing it safe so we wouldn't complain if it really does take that long. My solicitor has said they prefer telegraphic transfer.

Which ISAs are you withdrawing from? (not to be nosy) I was withdrawing from Abbey which was a postal ISA and could only be dealt with through the post and they said within 5 working days from receipt of the application to withdraw. OH was withdrawing from Halifax (i think) and I vaguely remember that he did it towards the end of the week and it was in the savings account by Tues the following week, so my guess is also abt 3-5 working days?

And I would say that they would stick the guidelines given and you might want to budget in the full 10 days coz for both me and OH, the money was transferred on the very last working day quoted!!!

Telegraphic transfer??? (TT?) Any reason why? Is it because the funds are coming in from overseas? I only had TT when I had funds coming in from overseas.

I just did a google and TT is also used to refer to CHAPS in UK. As I posted above, CHAPS is the same day transfer of money (instead of the normal 3 working days to clear) BUT you will have to pay a fee for it. Did you know abt this or did your solicitor tell you abt it? I know abt this coz we were also in a tight deadline to get our funds transferred to the solictor in time for exchange and told abt this alternative by our solicitor.