Can I ask the vendors to contribute to rent?

[chewbacca83]

Hi,
We are buying a house, neither party in a chain so should have been a quick sale but the vendors solicitord have been incredibly slow and we are 4+months in now. We had pushed that we wanted to complete by the end of this month because we are in rental and wanted to hand our notice in (2 months) . But it's the end of the month and we still haven't completed despite me ringing to chase several times. I expect they will want to complete next week but that will leave us very out of pocket. We will have missed the date to hand notice in so will in effect be paying three months notice plus bills for two houses at the same time as paying the mortgage. Im on mat leave so money is tight and it equates to an extra £1000. Additionally all the trades people we wanted to get in during our notice period will be unavailable for a couple of weeks over Xmas.
Heres my question. If they desperately want to complete before Xmas can we fairly ask them to contribute to our additional expenses? Or are we ok to say we won't complete until the end of December so at least we won't have to pay double costs for that month?

Thanks

You can ask and I think delaying completion until the end of January is fair. They can only say no!

December, sorry!

I'd go with not completing until the end of December. Then if they kick up a fuss explain why.

As you have not yet exchanged dates are still negotiable, although surely you have a judgement call to make to when to give notice. If you did not want to give notice until you had exchanged then you should have factored in the additional costs.

You can ask for anything you like so long as exchange has not happened (which should also fix completion date at the same time).

They can equally refuse or drop out. Are you sure their solicitor was informed of the original deadline, why this was set (and was it reasonable?).

If so, I'd phrase it carefully, making it clear that these are additional costs directly incurred as a result of unnecessary delays by their side of the process.

How much are we talking about and how much is the whole transaction?

I would never hand in notice on my rental until exchange. What if it fell through and then I would be homeless with a baby. I know two families that this has happened to. Granted those examples were in a long chain and the chain collapsed higher up.

Our solicitor sent them an email at the beginning of this month saying that we wanted to complete by the end of November. They know we are in rental. It took a month for their solicitor to even come back to our enquiries. It's so frustrating because there is no chain either side and it should be fairly straightforward.

Our rent is £775 plus council tax and bill's it's easily £1000 and then the mortgage will be £600 plus bills so easily £800. We can't afford that for three months running. Is would have been a push at two months but we factored that into our costs.

When we were moving from rented, we just said we wanted a three week gap between exchange and completion to avoid paying for two places at once. That would seem a more reasonable request to me than asking them to pay your rent.

Just tell them that exchange will now have to be delayed until x date due to your notice period - if they have a problem with that then you can discuss alternatives. Your solicitor actually needs to get theirs on the phone, ask what’s delaying things and ask for a proper timeline.

Are you sure it's 2 months notice you need to give? Everywhere I've ever rented, outside the fixed term it was 2 months for the LL to give to us, but 1 for us to give them.

I think your request sounds reasonable. But how do you know your landlord won't accept 2 months notice from the date of exchange rather than at the end of the calendar month? And are you sure you have to give 2 months notice? It's usually only 1 month for the tenants (2 for the landlord). Double check your tenancy agreement first before you say anything.

Speak to your landlord, ours let us give notice then extend if needed month to month

I've checked our agreement and it is two months but I will check to see if he has any flexibility with regards to adding a month at a time but going by our previous interactions with him he is very money orientated so I can't see him being flexible. To be fair to him it's not an easy time of year to find tenants.

If it's a rolling tenancy I don't think he gets to decide you need to give such long notice. Check with Shelter, but I think his 2 months is superseded by the 1 month rule, whatever he has written in the contract. It's different if it is a fixed term tenancy (eg 6 or 12 months) and you are hoping to break it early.