Seller moving to a new build

[Saz1793]

Hello,
I am wondering if we are being unreasonable in this situation. We are currently in the middle of buying a property. All our searches and survey have been completed. We were just to exchange at the end of march. We have since been informed the buyers house will not be ready until end of June earliest.

Would we be unreasonable to ask the seller to
move out end of April regardless? Our concern is the new build could keep getting delayed. Our mortgage offer is only to June.

What would you do

Ooooof buying a new build is a nightmare when you are also selling your property. We were in this position 2 year ago and luckily ours went to plan. But we were prepared to move into a short term rental should things have been delayed so we still got our sale. Not unreasonable to suggest it

Ask the sellers to move out.

As someone who bought a new build, we sold ours and then we moved into rented until our house was ready - then we found out there was a further 2 month delay. I’d insist on them vacating according to the plan otherwise you could be stuck for ages as the builders drag it out.

I would explain the mortgage offer is limited ( no need to give specific details ) so you want to hold to the original exchange date and perhaps would give a little on completion but June way too late & means the sale will fall through . They need a completion date before your offer tuns out & signed. Up to them then and I guess who blinks first.

Also do you have a buyer this could also affect

We completed the sale on our last house 3 months before the completion (new build) of our purchase. We did this to ensure the sale of ours continued with no delays. It was a ball ache with stuff in storage etc but at the time, was a no brainer

Interesting. So we are currently in a very unsuitable/ expensive rental, so we are ready to go.

Entirely reasonable to ask OP, you shouldn’t be penalised for somebody else’s builder having issues. My parents moved into temporary accommodation so that their buyers could move into their house - didn’t end up with the new build in the end as lost faith with the builders after several delays and blatant lies but all worked out for the best.

My buyers were also getting very short on their mortgage offer but we managed to exchange and complete on the Friday before it expired - fortunately my new build completion was all right on schedule so no dramas. If necessary I’d have put my stuff in storage and moved out though.

We were in this situation a few years back. We didn’t want to lose the buyer who was purchasing our house (they threatened to pull out if the sale didn’t go through within a certain timeframe) and the people we were buying from were moving to a new build that kept getting delayed. In the end we continued with selling our home and then moved into a rental for 6 months (which was really inconvenient as I was pregnant and had a toddler) but ultimately we loved the house we were buying enough to do that.
You are not unreasonable to ask the sellers if they would consider going ahead with the sale and them moving into a temp rental, but this will obviously inconvenience them and probably leave them out of pocket. So it’s ultimately up to them if they say yes or no. No harm in asking.

Thanks for your advice. I will email our solicitor and let them
know we need a completion date close to the original date. Thanks for all your help

We had that issue. Our vendors told us on the viewing that they would move into rented if needs-be.

We offered them full asking in the March. By the June, the week before the stamp duty deadline, we were ready to exchange - so three months later. At that point, they piped up with "oh we haven't found anywhere yet and we're not prepared to rent" Then they decided they were buying a new build and it was going to take until at least that Christmas.

Thankfully, our buyers mortgage expired the day after the reduced stamp duty deadline, so we were able to use this as an excuse. I think in the end, they went to an Air BnB - as it was, they cost us £6k, and it could have been £9k if we hadn't made the reduced stamp duty deadline. Our buyers were FTBs, so they didn't need to pay it. They were moving into a new build so the developers were paying theirs; it was just us who was financially hit by them being dickheads.