8 weeks between exchange and completion

[zizu73]

Hi,
As the title says, our buyer wants an 8 weeks gap. He is an investor and I believe this has to do with his bridging loan and the time it takes to release funds from his other properties. He is happy to exchange immediately. Our Seller is happy with this and there is no other chain. For us it's not great because the delay might make it more difficult for our kids to get in into the new school but not a deal breaker as this is a long term house. Our solicitor has no objections and in essence said that the risk is more or less the same with 1 week gap and 8 week one.

I did some brief research and it looks as if the one issue is that it more difficult and expensive to get a building insurance. Any other downsides/risks?

Thanks.

More chance of something going wrong I guess which would mean your buyer pulling out (death, redundancy). But I don’t think it’s a problem.

Our buyers kindly gave us about 3 months between exchange and completion as went under offer much more quickly than we expected and weren’t in a position to move as quickly as they wanted.

Once exchanged, you can't pull out.

But yes, I would worry about anything going wrong with the property between exchange and completion so it'd be a case of a good insurance.

And I'd double check that having exchanged you can apply for a school. Otherwise, you'll miss the deadline and could end up with whatever random, undersubscribed school there is.

You can pull out. You lose your deposit.

It isn’t just the loss of deposit. The vendor can take you to court to get an order to buy + it could cost you £££ in coats and damages.

the property has to be insured.
normally on exchange vendor takes insurance risk.
it may be easier to put something in the exchange document to say vendor has to keep it insured: solicitor will help with wording

oops I meant normally purchaser buys insurance,
but this can be flexed

We had about 6 weeks as we wanted to get the flaky vendor nailed down as he kept changing the goal posts and faffing about.

Every time I've moved it's been around 8 weeks, never less IIRC. Scotland though, so possibly different implications, I don't know.

Thank you all. We have arranged the insurance. I think we will accept the delay. It will give us more time to pack and arrange various things. Hopefully this will not have a negative impact on the school entry.

We could apply for the local school we wanted in the new house catchment so long as we had exchanged before the deadline. I just had to send proof in that exchange had happened

Our local authority is insisting that they will not consider our application
until we move in. The local EA was surprised as they said that in the past it was always sufficient with an exchange contract and a letter from the solicitor. We will try once we have exchanged, nothing to lose.