giving notice on rental

[Jinimcoroneo]

Hi everyone :) I'm new here so haven't posted before. I wanted to get your opinion on something. We are currently in rental accommodation and in the process of purchasing a house which is a new build, so there's no chain and much less chance of something happening to prevent exchange. That being said, we have a 2 month notice on our rental and our mortgage agreement expires at the end of october (so we have to complete by end of october). The estate agent and developer have confirmed that we will 100% be able to complete by the deadline, but exchange may not happen until just a few weeks prior. If we wait to exchange to give notice we will likely have a month and a half overlap of rent and mortgage payments. However if we were to give notice at the end of september, that would only be a month but obviously we wouldn't have exchanged by then. What would you do? Considering it's a new build, would you give notice before exchanging to save the money? The rental isn't cheap and the mortgage payments are even less cheap thanks to high interest rates...

Is there anywhere you could stay in the meantime if the worst happened and you were effectively homeless..? If not I'd probably err on the side of caution rather than face that risk

Or could you ask letting agent about the possibility of reducing the notice period? Worth an ask

I'm in a similar position. I've decided I will wait until exchange because I would be so worried about something happening and being left homeless.

Given the current market, you may well be able to get out of your contract earlier if they are able to re-let quickly.

Please also make sure you check your tenancy agreement - they may try to charge you the relisting fee for wanting to leave the agreement early - but is unlikely to specify what this fee is.

I will be saying that I am willing to move sooner if they want to re-let earlier - but I am prepared to pay for the full length of my contract (I'm on a break clause so could be up to 4 months given where I am in my contract).

Thanks everyone, calling the letting agent might be a good bet, I just didn't want to prematurely let them know we might be leaving but I guess that doesn't really hurt anybody if we haven't given notice yet. Unfortunately we do not have another rental option and we have a dog and 2 cats so finding rentals isn't easy...

We also have a break clause. The agreement is 2 years but we can break the agreement at any time after 4 months with a 2 months notice, so there can't be penalties for leaving early as we are within our rights to give notice without repercussions.

This might be something you know and are taking into account already, but the notice for your rental might need to end on the last day of your tenancy, rather than just 'two months'. So if you started renting on the 21st of the month however long ago it was, the notice period may need to end on the 20th of a month.

I only learnt this when I went from rented to bought many years ago, and it actually ended up being about 2.5 months from the day of exchange to the end tenancy date for our rented house. Fortunately had a decent gap of a few weeks from exchange to completion, so only paid both mortgage and rent for about 6 weeks.

We went with waiting until exchange to make sure we were covered in case of last minute falling through. I am not sure I could risk doing otherwise, unless I had family or someone to fall back on in emergencies.

If you can afford the overlap, I would prioritise your peace of mind and not risk something going wrong with the exchange. Moving house is a stressful process at the best of times, so you don't want to be worried about you and your animals ending up homeless.

Just make sure that if you offer to leave earlier than the two months that they don't try and apply relisting fees.

Can you see if you can influence the exchange date so that there’s a longer gap between exchange and completion. I think it’s quite common for there to be a big gap with new builds.

I would be careful as it's a new build. My daughter exchanged at the end of June, after completion date being put back she was told it would be the latest 30th September then last week told it could now run over to November by which time she will need an extension on her mortgage offer. She only has to give 1 months notice on her rental but it is still a worry as she hasn't really been told why it's held up so long.

that's really unfortunate, I'm sorry that happened to her especially if they can't tell her why and now she has to pay higher interest rates. I'm guessing she didn't get a completion date locked in when she exchanged? We have told our solicitor that they have to give a completion date in the contract or we won't exchange for precisely that reason. I also looked into a mortgage extension and what a new agreement would look like, and we will be paying an additional 1000 a month more of just interest if we extended or asked for a new offer. I have told the developer that we will not do this.

they should say that in the contract though, correct? There's nothing in the contract about paying any relisting fees and I have in writing from the agent that if we wanted to leave at 4 months there would be no financial repercussions. They also didn't take a deposit which was quite shocking for how much we are paying in rent, but I guess that works in our favour.