I am in the process of moving house. I viewed the property I’m looking to buy in August and my offer was accepted in mid-September. I made clear at the time that I needed to sell my property in order to buy and the vendor was okay with this. I went ahead and got my property listed as soon as possible (mid-October) and had accepted an offer from a chain free cash buyer by mid December.
I made a conscious effort to try to push along my sale as much as possible, cognisant of the fact my vendor was waiting.
My sale was ready to complete by the end of March but the purchase was not and the vendor’s solicitors seemed to be especially slow in responding to enquiries. I held off exchanging for a few weeks and then discussed with my vendor that I was looking to agree a completion date in mid-May for my sale. He agreed that worked from his side and at the time was confident the legals would complete by then.
It has since become apparent that his solicitors are both inordinately slow at responding to basic requests and incompetent. (They have sent documents to my solicitor relating to completely different transactions for example!) Anyway, completion on my sale is in less than a week and, despite multiple daily phone calls and emails over the past few weeks, the vendor’s solicitors are yet to respond to a number of enquiries and I don’t expect to be ready to exchange or complete on my purchase.
The property I’m buying was previously let as an Airbnb but is now vacant. I’m wondering if it would be reasonable for me to ask the vendor if I move some of my furniture into the flat to avoid moving this into storage and then (hopefully) moving again in a few weeks?
I would propose that this would be subject to a written legal agreement and maximum time period (so if we didn’t complete within that time I’d have to move it out). I’m aware this would be not insurable but I’m fine with that too as it wouldn’t be valuable items. The rest of my stuff l will keep with me and I’ll stay with friends.
As an aside, I will note also that I asked for the property to be taken off the market / marked as under offer / sold STC and this has never happened. It’s still listed as fully available, and given the situation one could assume there has not been significant further interest and therefore I should have a stronger bargaining position.