Unreasonable expectations?

[WinterAsh]

We had an offer accepted on a house in mid December - no chain. The seller wanted to exchange on 14 February (next Tuesday), which we were happy to work to, although it didn't seem massively realistic with Christmas in the middle. They didn't send the contract to my solicitor until mid January and responses to our enquiries and lots of addition documents arrived today. They are inisiting we still exchange next Tuesday!

Our solicitor says there's no chance of meeting this deadline. Has anyone been in a similar situation?

I was told last week that our sellers have now found a house to buy and their sellers want to exchange at the same time (14 Feb). Not sure when this all happened but it seems very unusual that this purchase, which started after ours, could be wrapped up in time. It's all a bit odd.

Generally IME people want to rush stuff for one of four reasons :

i) Their organisation is piss poor, or they have unrealistically commited themselves to something they cannot achieve, and have decided to make their problem your problem.

ii) The people who work for them are piss poor or slow and have been dragging their heels to the frustration of both you and them.

iii) They want to rush things through in the hope that you will miss something important.

iv) They have someone else they wish to sell to, and will make an attempt to justify that by giving you impossible deadlines to meet.

You can either try to meet their expectations or not with all the risks that that each option entails. Personally for me it would be a hard no, with the consequence that they might decide to pull out. Because even if they do, they are unlikely to achieve their objective (exchange with someone) at short notice. If they do pull out and manage to exchange with someone else on a few days notice, then it is likely that that was their objective all along.

They are proposing a completion date of the end of March so can't be in a massive rush. I thought 2 weeks was more normal as a gap between exchange and completion.

I'm reliant on my solicitor and we're not doing shortcuts to make this deadline.

I'm wondering if they need the deposit money for something else. They are Down sizing so will have leftover cash.

They may just be worried we might pull out in a falling market.

They can't use your deposit money for something else. That goes in their solicitor's client account ready for completion when the remainder of the funds are added. I guess they could borrow on the basis of having exchanged and they could have speeded up their purchase by skipping some of the processes - local authority searches aren't necessary if you aren't borrowing money to buy but I know nobody who thinks this would be a wise decision to make. Ultimately, all this sounds suspiciously speedy and you are very wise to refuse to be rushed especially if you are still at the enquiries stage of the conveyance.

Remind them that they didn't get their paperwork submitted within in a reasonable time when that date was set so mid march seems more reasonable to work to, to ready for completion at end of march. Any issues from that are their problem.

That's interesting @Vestigia I didn't know that - I thought they could just use it for whatever!

I think we're in a strong position, and they do want to sell to us, it's just stressing me out that they are pushing something unrealistic.

My solicitor has been clear that the estate agent needs to manage their expectations.