gap between exchange and completion

[FrustratedBuyer1]

Hi all. Need some advice.
Sale of our house is ready to complete, our purchase is taking longer and being difficult.

We’d be willing to air B&b for a couple of weeks to keep our buyers, but only if we’ve exchanged on our purchase.

But our solicitor is advising against this due to covid and wants 4days or so between exchange and completion.

Has anyone done this recently? is it possible to put a clause in case of covid isolation etc, I’m sure I’d read that somewhere.

Anyone?

We had a month between exchange and completion, it's quite common in building projects and new builds. Do you mean complete on sale, exchange on purchase, then complete on purchase a few weeks later? If so that's exactly what we did, felt much safer than completing on sale without guarantee of exchange of purchase.

Do you mean move out of your property, stay in a AirBnB and then once completed on your purchase move in?

You can have any amount of time you want from exchange to completion on either property although in Covid times they are trying to protect again needing to isolate.

You could push the seller to exchange and put the completion date in the future by which time they could be out, however, they may not be willing to commit to this.

The stinger? The cost of the removals, you pay twice plus storage. Been there, done that. So you have one removal team remove you but the van won't take as much as your things as the van has storage container things in it that they have to pack everything into. Then they store it, and you have another team (or same one, different day) move you into the new property. This was years ago though. We moved in the day after we got the keys so we had the whole day to move in rather than just the afternoon.

We had two months between exchange and completion. of course you have more risk with covid. But if you have the air B&B for a couple of weeks after completion just in case then it means if you come down with something you don't necessarily need to move on completion day.

I'd do the same as you and complete on my sale if there's a few weeks between but you're gonna need to agree a completion date at exchange so not sure how you're gonna guarentee you've exchanged on your purchase before completion.

I requested a 3 week gap for our sale between exchange and completion because I wanted reassurance it was going through but needed a few weeks to sort out storage and onward temp accommodation after my purchase fell though.

The chain agreed and were just relieved I hadn't just pulled out.