Completion date for purchase and sale on different days - has anyone done this?

[SheWouldNever]

Waiting for my solicitor to get back to me with their recommendation on this, and google not giving me many answers, so thought I’d ask here.

We are buying and selling, exchange hopefully today if we can agree on a completion date. Problem is that our seller and buyer want different dates for completion, neither willing to budge, and we are stuck in the middle able to do any date.

Without running it past the rest of the chain, our buyers made a contract with their buyers that they would complete on their sale no later than 24th March. Meanwhile, due to mortgage reasons, our seller wants to complete in April, which we were told about weeks ago, before it was announced that our buyers had this earlier deadline and had already exchanged with their buyers without running it past the onward chain (I suspect our EAs probably told them it would be fine).

Obviously our buyers aren’t keen on April as they will need to find temporary a accommodation and storage. It is being suggested that we, the middle party in the chain, exchange with both sale and purchase today, complete our sale in line with our buyers deadline, move into our new property that day (which is vacant as it was a rental property) and complete on our new property in April in line with our seller’s completion requirements.

Just wondering if anyone has done similar, and if there are any particular risks to us doing it this way that might not have occurred to me? Obviously it’s a PITA doing it this way when all the inconvenience is on us, despite it being on our EA and possibly the buyer’s solicitor giving them poor advice to proceed with a contract with their buyer without consulting the rest of the chains requirements first, or being prepared that doing things this way might mean they’d have to think of a plan B for temporary accommodation. And I’m quite pissed off at our EAs management of this when we are paying them a decent amount in sales fees. But if there’s little risk to us than I suppose we could complete on different days?

@Gladly I know what you mean, it isn’t our responsibility. I do feel a bit for our buyers, though. They also have children and pets. Frustrating that it’s the two people in the chain who don’t actually need to move into properties that are being stubborn about the dates (one developer and one person selling a vacant house), and the two parties who actually need to move whole families into new houses that are stuck in the middle at the mercy of everyone else’s requirements

Actually the one selling their house you does have a valid reason. Penalty charges for early redemption can be 5% of the mortgage so on a £200,000 mortgage being redeemed could be £10K. If may have been prepared to take that on the chin if the CGT was going to change massively but now he has no reason to.

It is your buyers who need to find temporary accommodation.

OP not sure whether it’s already been mentioned but can your seller do a non simultaneous port if they are staying with the same mortgage company? I’ve learnt recently though our own sale/purchase that although they have rules, there is some wriggle room regarding early repayment fees. The mortgage call centre staff were more ‘computer says no’ but our broker spoke to her mortgage company manager contact and apparently there can be some flexibility.

@Bloodyhamabeads I am sure he will be looking into all of his options with the lender. But I’m not sure there is a mortgage to port, once the house sells, the mortgage will be fully paid off, and I don’t know whether he has other mortgages on different properties. He is past retirement age and possibly mortgage free with the exception of this property. What @SeasonFinale says makes a lot of sense, I didn’t realise the early repayment fees could be so high.

When we moved 3 years ago, we did move into the house we were buying, before we completed the purchase. In this case it was our mortgage that was delayed and we were very happy that our seller was willing to let us rent the property prior to completion. We had a 'holiday let' style agreement drawn up and agreed week by week - in the end it was 7 weeks before we were able to complete thanks to Halifax being very slow with mortgage. The sellers are the ones taking the risk financially, but I did feel precarious and a bit anxious the whole time, as they could have kicked us out at a week's notice at any point had they wanted to. And we only confirmed the arrangement 2 days before we moved! They were lovely, though, and charged us less than market rent for the place. As a contingency I was preparing to put everything into storage, put dh in a B&B so he could be close to work and decamp to my parents' place 50 miles away with my daughters. Thankfully they were not yet at school and I was on mat leave so we had that option. It was a stressful time!

It seems a good solution if your seller is happy to rent to you for the interim days. I actually gave my buyers access a couple of days early as I was moving into temporary accommodation. I thought we would need some legal arrangements but my solicitor and agent were happy without. In my case it was only a couple of days and my buyer was able to move some furniture in prior to completion.

In your case I would think a short term rental agreement would be required by your seller to ensure that you don't gain 'squatters rights'. There is a small risk to you, as you don't own the new property until completion. Your seller could in theory pull out, although there would be penalties for doing so after Exchange. It does seem the simplest solution but there may be some legal fees that someone would have to cover.

@bluebunnyblue I hadn’t even thought about the fact he might want us to pay rent for the weeks before we complete. That would be an extra cost I’d rather not pay seeing as this is his timeframe issue and not ours.

@paulox

It seems a good solution if your seller is happy to rent to you for the interim days. I actually gave my buyers access a couple of days early as I was moving into temporary accommodation. I thought we would need some legal arrangements but my solicitor and agent were happy without. In my case it was only a couple of days and my buyer was able to move some furniture in prior to completion.

In your case I would think a short term rental agreement would be required by your seller to ensure that you don't gain 'squatters rights'. There is a small risk to you, as you don't own the new property until completion. Your seller could in theory pull out, although there would be penalties for doing so after Exchange. It does seem the simplest solution but there may be some legal fees that someone would have to cover.

Your solicitor gave you absolutely terrible advice allowing your buyers' access prior to completion. Fortunately for you it worked out!

The agents I get. They don't care nor do they think about the legal implications of such bad advice, they just want everything off their desks! But the solicitor - I am lost for words - and it does make realise why so many negligence claims against solicitors relate to property matters.

We did, we moved into our house a month before, exchanged, moved the next day, completed a month after.
Our buyers wouldn't budge, because of a cock up on sellers side they couldn't budge but she let us move in.
Didn't pay rent as her and our solicitor advised against it.

So many alarm bells ringing .
How was this allowed to happen ?
All solicitors are supposed to communicate to each other when discussing completion /exchange so how can the lower rungs of the ladder do this without your solicitors knowledge?
Legally you should not be moving into any house before completion as it’s not your house yet and if rent is agreed in the interim then there needs to be a contract drawn up.
You keep saying it’s the Estate agents fault when really they are nothing to do with your problem , it’s the solicitors!
Estate agents just sell houses, they don’t have any legal say in when you can exchange or complete and most have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to the legal side of it (trust me, recently been there!)
You are in a chain and must move as such or the chain is broken.
Also I don’t know why you are so worried about your buyers, they have forced you into this situation and I would not be bending to their will as what they have done is underhanded .
I’m still struggling to understand why their solicitors allowed this unless it is all bluster and they’re trying to force your hand and make you move quicker which again would make me want to slam on the breaks .
This is not your problem ,it is your buyers and it’s up to them to sort it .

There is a risk to you - if your seller dies in those 2 weeks, the property could go into probate and that makes it a nightmare. We did this last February for 2 weeks as it meant the seller could avoid a massive early redemption penalty on their mortgage but we could still move at half term which was logistically so much better for us. They paid for the legal work and we signed something to say we'd not make major changes to the house in that period etc. We then completed on 1 March.

@motherofawhirlwind that sounds exactly what is being proposed for us here. Glad to hear of someone who has done similar, although it does sound stressful and still not sure I want the added risk.

@ConstanceGracy the chain has been broken. Originally it was buyers buyer, buyer, us, our chain free purchase. Our buyers agreed with their buyer to exchange and compete, breaking the rest of the onward chain. Our solicitor was not informed because they don’t have anything to do with the sale of our buyers property. We were only informed by our estate agent after the fact, when our buyers had already exchanged with their buyers and agreed a completion date (I made a separate post about this at the time because I was so surprised that it had happened without us being aware).

Perhaps our buyers solicitor should have checked with our solicitor before deciding to break the chain, but as far as I’m aware there were no discussions about this between our solicitors. I am 99% sure our EA would have encouraged our buyers to break chain to hurry the sale along and not risk losing their developer buyer, which is why I suspect our buyers may have been misinformed / given unrealistic expectations. It is surprising that their solicitor went ahead with breaking the chain without having a conversation with our solicitor about potential completion dates for their onward purchase, but I can only think that at the time, everyone was assuming that the whole chain would want to complete before the end of the SLDT holiday in March (before the extension was announced).

Basically, on one hand I can see how this has happened (lack of communication), but on the other I am still angry that the chain was broken without consulting us and as a result of a completion date made between our buyer and our buyer’s buyer, we are expected to take on the risk and inconvenience of this proposal of separate completion dates.

Seriously it is their issue. They will have to camp with relatives/friend/travellodge.

Surely the ones who need to find temp accommodation are the ones who have agreed to move in March without the agreement of the rest of the chain.

Are you porting your mortgage? Your solicitor will be acting for the mortgage lender too so will need to check with them but that could be an issue as they won’t have their asset to secure lending on. If it’s a new mortgage less of an issue (or cash of course!)

And no completion date is fixed and agreed until you’ve exchanged on it so they are being very unreasonable to say it’s immovable.

I think I'd not entertain it. I've never heard of a contract on moving date ..... do they just mean they agreed? At the end of the day no one can move until everyone is ready! Stand firm and say no!

Update: Our solicitor advised against us doing this as it means us taking on all the risk in the event the seller dies between exchange and completion, or more likely, that he finds due to his mortgage terms, that we can't actually move in to the property between exchange and completion - which would leave us having to scramble for temporary accommodation instead of our buyers, who were the ones who created this situation.

All this considered, we decided that this is all on our buyers and they have to sort it out, not us. communicated that to our EA, and the same day we get a call back from our EA saying they buyers have managed to change the completion date on their contract with their buyer, so April is now fine. All that palava about the fact that they couldn't possibly complete in April and find temporary accommodation and turns out it was obviously pretty simple for them to sort out?!

So now we are on track to all complete on the same day. Exchange today. hopefully.

Glad it’s sorted now.
One thing I have learnt during our buying / selling debacle is that people will try anything to get what they want . Our buyers have been particularly underhanded and if we didn’t want to move so much I’d have told them to get bent a long time ago!

Sounds like an awful idea forced onto you by your buyer TBH.

Your buyer made the problem by exchanging, they need to sort it out, probably by finding temporary accommodation for themselves for the intervening weeks.

My situation last year was similar - my buyers were super keen to complete two weeks before my seller could (due to other problems up the chain.)

I therefore agreed to complete two weeks earlier on my sale and go into temporary accommodation until my completion on my purchase two weeks later. I agreed to break the chain for those two weeks so my sale wouldn't fall through - had to put stuff in storage etc - and then lockdown came along so that is another story too long for this thread!

I did tie it all in with exchange so it was all legally bound. I am really sure any solicitor would advise against you moving into your sale before completion - both your own solicitor and your sellers. You really need to talk to your solicitor - it's what you pay them for.

Oh I see you've sorted it - well done! I thought any decent solicitor would think it a bad idea!

Did you exchange @SheWouldNever?

Yes @NoSquirrels we have exchanged. Finally!

@SheWouldNever Congrats on exchanging, glad you’ve got a completion date.

@SheWouldNever

Yes *@NoSquirrels* we have exchanged. Finally!

Hooray!