Completion day - seller not there

[HopefullyMoving]

Our exchange has been out back until Tuesday. We missed out today by 5 minutes!!! Anyway, this means completion will be put back from Friday to Monday but the seller advised me she's on holiday.

The property we are buying is empty and as we know the seller we already have the keys and access.

Does it matter that she won't be available on completion day? Or will we have to push that back until she returns?

I would not expect to see the vendor at completion. The only time I have was when the vendor was unorganised and still moving things out of the house after completion.

As long as they have given the estate agents the keys it shouldn’t matter.

I never saw my seller at any point in the proceedings. I wouldn't know them if I walked past them in the street. I got a call from my lawyer confirming the money had been received by their lawyers & I could collect my keys.

I have completed on a house both as a seller and as a buyer from another country. Just need to leave signed papers with the solicitors.

We completed 2 weeks ago. Our buyer was out of the country as were the people we were buying from who had already vacated. Good luck!

Why does exchanging on Monday mean you have to put completion back? I would guess that you can get everyone to agree to that.

Why can’t you complete as planned on Friday? No need for vendor to be in the county either way so long as property empty and you can get access to the keys.

No issue completing with her not there - we lived in another county when ours completed and was empty

You can exchange and complete on the same day if all parties are in agreement. Why don't you push to complete on Friday?

We need a week because of two reasons really:

1. The bank has said it needs 3-5 working days to draw down the funds, and
2. If we exchanged yesterday we'd move most of our stuff this weekend but as we haven't exchanged we can't do that (reasonable agreement with seller). So we will use next weekend instead. Also my dh is working away Thursday and Friday and would have been ok if we moved this weekend as I would just be doing the final bits and cleaning our old house. But I can't do it on my own.

(We are only moving across the street so no removal company booked)

Thanks all for the responses

we were gone days before completion, leaving keys with the agent - when the money cleared they gave the keys to the buyer. no need to meet.