Notice and exchange / completion

[sicklycolleague]

We’re 2.5 months into the buying process and our estate agents are pushing all parties to go for end of October completion (vendors are breaking chain and moving into rented for us). We have to hand in two months’ notice (which if we handed in now would take us to 23 November) but the vendors’ solicitor has been slow and there are still issues around the freehold. Further enquiries had to be raised once LPE1s were received.

Is this likely to move quickly once it actually starts moving? Our solicitor isn’t able to report to us until the freehold stuff is clarified, but otherwise there are no delays on our side — just have to sort a deed of trust.

The notice period is triggering a break clause; our actual tenancy agreement runs until summer 2023.

WWYD?

It's really difficult to advise. We did this last time and ended up with nowhere to live as the (chain free) purchase took longer than the estate agents said. We had a month gap, had to put our stuff into storage, and find places to stay temporarily with family and friends.

The place we're purchasing now, agents put us under huge pressure to set a completion date for mid-September,m for all parties, we still haven't even exchanged. This is due to delays in conveyancing from what I can see

I suppose the other slight niggle is our landlord has put in a clause in the tenancy agreement that we can't vacate the lease between 1 December and 27 January in any given year, so really the break clause needs to be triggered next week or not for months.

How long is a piece of string?
You can never tell as it all down to the solicitors you use, the info required, how quickly info comes back and if more info is required and how quickly everyone else acts/etc.

Until you have exchange of contracts it is very difficult to predict and anyone can back out with a penalty up until exchange of contract - after that it is 99.999% plain sailing.