Would we be stupid to put in our notice

[angel0071987]

Hi
So we are in rented at the moment and are meant to be moving into our first home ASAP. Lasts week the solicitor said all was go and could we transfer deposit and monies etc with the offchance we could be completed in just over a week on the 20th. Great we announced our one months notice to landlord would need to be submitted on Wednesday or Thursday at latest (20th). On Friday the 14th the solicitor announced again that although we had been delayed by a few days she was ringing the other solicitor and was going to exchange but if she couldn't get hold of him it would be Monday with a completion date set as 3rd July. As offered by them. Come Monday no news and now it turns out that they weren't ready on Monday with the date for completion that they proposed of 3rd July. Rang EA too who's able to contact the two people in chain and she said they want to complete as soon as possible and therefore the 3rd isn't suitable.
We've already to everyone that we are away next week and therefore whilst happy to exchange ASAP we cannot complete until July. Our sellers said they wanted a Wednesday so 3rd is the soonest.

Now it comes to two days before our rent is due and we haven't exchanged yet. Would we be mad to put in our notice without this safety of knowing everything ok. On the off chance that they just want to exchange and complete same day or within a week. (Although why they can't exchange now is beyond me...)
We feel so lost and dangling by a thread as ftb and just want to be in new house before baby arrives in sept.
Any thoughts

We were supposed to college end of april and then start of may and dint end up completely un till 29th may.

we are like you renting and buying we are not going to give our months notice till we have exchanged i would rather pay an extra months rent than end up in limbo between the two stages

Personally I wouldn’t. I don’t know how tight your finances are but I would have thought potentially paying an extra month of rent, because you didn’t give notice in time, is preferable to giving notice early and potentially having nowhere to live.

Your solicitor should advise not to hand in your notice until you’ve exchanged as the sellers could still pull out until that has happened and you would be homeless.

You can ask for a time period eg 2 weeks between exchange and completion to reduce the amount of time you are paying rent and mortgage.

I'd wait and stipulate two weeks between exchange and completion - it'll give you extra time to hire a van/ book removals and move too.

Yes it would be stupid to hand in notice until you have exchanged. Until contracts have been exchanged someone else in the chain could still pull out.
It happened to us when we were FTB buyers first thing we knew about is was when our vendors didn't turn up to exchange. They had been on holiday and changed their minds!

What AwkwardPaws said. It largely depends on how much of a catastrophe it would be to end up homeless. If you are going to give notice before exchange, at the very least you need a really solid plan B.

We have handed in notice before exchanging. It's not advisable but we were young and could go back to parents.

No way. We were like you and debated what to do for ages. In the end it cost us about £1200 but it was worth it to know we would definitely have somewhere to live even if the chain collapsed.

I strongly recommend you don't.
Our landlord gave us notice to leave at the end of a 6 month tenancy and this put enormous pressure on us to get into our new place quickly.
It is so common to have delays even when you're expecting to exchange.
As an example - we expected to exchange on our sale in January.... it happened in May.
Don't want to scare you but you have to put yourself first.

Can you speak to your landlord, do you have a good relationship?

When we were purchasing our house I let our landlord know ASAP that we were buying and when we had a rough ideal if date I told landlord this and she was happy for us to move it give or take as long as we paid rent for when we were there.

Tbf ours was a little different as we both new our rented house needed work done to it before new tenants moved in so the landlord always expected a vacant period between tenants.

The last time I sold a house (we already had another property so we were not moving ourselves) there was a four week gap between exchange and completion because our buyer's buyer was renting and wanted to give notice. We expected that tbh but the EA seemed to think it was a bit of a long gap - probably longer than average but I can absolutely see why someone wouldn't want to give notice without the exchange going through first so it was fine with us.

Build in a gap between exchange and completion!

Thanks everyone :) will hold off unless we have somehow miraculously completed tomorrow. It's just so annoying as vendors have us the dates and then decide they are unsuitable.

@Rarfy we thought we had a good relationship with our landlord... notified them when we were selling our property and looking for one to purchase
Unfortunately this meant that they assumed we wanted to move out at the end of our 6 month tenancy and gave us notice when we were really not ready