If you are renting, when you do give notice when buying?

[poocatcherchampion]

The people buying our house are currently in rented accommodation and have to give 4-6 weeks notice to move.

The move preparations have been going slowly, mainly because the house we are hoping to move to hasn't been totally straightforward. We have been waiting a month for subsidence to be designated settlement, the report has now gone to our mortgage providers for them to lift the restrictions on the mortgage. We are still to do searches and finalise the contracts, so we are not totally out of the woods yet.

However we are all keen to move asap, and if this works out then we don't want to delay. I'm trying to work out whether people really do give notice on a rental after exchange or whether they just take a leap of faith.

Reasonably for us, once the mortgage provider has lifted the restrictions we think that would be sensible, but it is not us with whom the risk sits.

What is the convention oh wise mumsnetters?

I think that people wait until exchange of contracts generally - we just did this . It would be nice to be completing sooner than we are, but then again, it would have been awful if we gave notice earlier then everything fell through.

We gave our notice on the day of exchange. I had this fear of everything falling through and our landlord having already found another tenant leaving us homeless! At least now if anybody pulls out there are heavy penalties to pay.

We ended up with a 6 week overlap -so had the rented house and the new house. This suited us though as we wanted to do some redecoration and it was worth the extra money.

Tbh, what they do isn't really your concern and I wouldn't spend time trying to second guess them. Just stick to the dates you want and let them come back to you.

We gave notice on the day of exchange, two weeks between exchange and completion and then two week overlap to move, decorate etc. which suited us perfectly. We always were clear from the beginning of the process that we would want a 2 week minimum between exchange and completion to allow us to give notice on our rental.

Yes, we're having ~ a week overlap too, mainly for cleaning etc!

Thats the sensible answer but not the one I wanted.
Its all very well saying leave them to it, but our sellers are threatening to pull out if we don't hurry up, so it is in our interests to move asap.

I sense your buyers gave notice before exchange and now they rental is running out of time.

We pushed to exchange on the 15th May because we hoped our rental period running from 15th may to 14th June would be the last.

Exchange.

We gave notice after exchange but the people we were buying from didn't want to wait a month for completion so they paid us our last months rent and we completed a week after exchange. This was their estate agent's suggestion as we said we couldn't afford to complete sooner and pay mortgage and rent out of the same months money iyswim.

tenants risk being homeless if they give notice before exchange of contract.

get exchange done and everyone is tied in.

I understand buyers think it reasonable to give notice from their rented accommodation after exchange. But can someone explain what would be the penalty for the sellers if they change their mind after exchange? Other than returning the deposit I mean. To me, not even exchange of contracts is a sure thing.

if someone drops out after exchange they lose their deposit and are liable for everyone else's costs, right through the chain.

so yes, it can happen (I know someone who has had it happen twice but the large amount of money involved has meant they coped!).