Completion by certain date as condition of sale - enforceable??

[PogoBob]

Had an offer accepted on a house last Friday, looking at the memorandum of sale from the estate agent which sets 'completion by end October' as a condition of sale.

Moving quickly suits us, we have money ready and submitted our mortgage application and instructed solicitors on Monday so doing everything we can to progress quickly and will continue to so - even been taking papers to solicitors in person to save postal time!

Obviously though there is a lot that is out of our control so I can't see how this condition of sale is really enforceable - would any seller walk away from a sale because delays in searches etc. means they have to wait another week or so?

[MoreBeta]

If the completion date is in the contract and you fail to complete and they incur costs (eg hotel bills) they can claim those against you.

[RancerDoo]

I fail to see how that could be enforced, and a memorandum of sale is not a contract.
Of course, the seller can walk at any point up to exchange, so the thing to do is to get a move on and to update the agent (who will badly want this to go through) on progress. Would a seller walk because it looks as though completion will be a few days late? Probably not.
Incidentally, anything less than four weeks for exchange is tight IME so you need to stay on top of your conveyancer and ensure they resolve any issues promptly.

[Rhubarbgarden]

We had this, both with the people buying our house and the people we were buying from. When we asked our buyers if we could delay by a week, they had a hissy fit so we said ok, fair enough, we did agree to be out, and arranged to go into temporary accommodation. But when we tried to tie down a completion date with the vendors of the property we were buying, they suddenly came up with all sorts of excuses and delaying tactics even though it was them who had said 'must complete within four weeks', so we got stuck in temporary accommodation hell for ages. Nightmare.

[wendybird77]

We've just had this as well. We would love to be in by end of October and have done everything in our power to make it speedy, but the reality is it may not happen. Nothing they or we can do about it except chase. However, in our last house we agreed to move in and rent from the vendors in order to ensure we got the house (they had already moved out and their buyers pulled out the night before exchange!). Because we had been talking to him personally and he hated his EAs we just agreed amongst ourselves and it worked out just fine.

[bumbez]

We've had this too, our buyers said they would pull out if we didn't exchange, so we took the gamble and have exchanged /completed with them and are now renting our house by the day till our mortgage comes through.

HSBC have finally given the go ahead so we should complete in 6 days. Thank goodness but its been very stressful.

Fwiw I don't think our buyer would really have walked away but it wasn't a risk we wanted to take, buyers are few and far between, here anyway.