Buyers pushing for early completion

[OldBun58]

Or house buyers are first time buyers, they want to take advantage of the property tax discount which expires on 1 April. We accepted this condition when agreed the sale, and were planning to complete no later than 31 March.
Due to winter season and illnesses we did not manage to find a suitable house to move into - until last weekend, and agreed the purchase of the property whose sale just fell through. We are hoping to complete the purchase by the end of March or face renting, which would mean moving twice and an extreme upheaval at our nearly retirement age.
We have not even exchanged contracts, but our buyers now insist on completion date 5 March. We explained that we need to exchange contracts ASAP to secure a rental property, and they replied that they will if we agree the completion on 21st March.
Whilst we understand that they want a buffer, that extra 7-10 days might make a big difference to us as we might complete our purchase in time to avoid renting.
Should we agree to this date or insist on a week later? How binding is the agreement on the moving date that far ahead? Can it be moved nearer the time to suit us?
The FTB are renting at the moment, and saying they need to give a notice. Our seller is in the process of buying as well but does not know the timescale yet.
Any ideas how to get around deadlines and moving twice? We are not very well but desperately need to move, so cancelling the sale is out of question.

You would need an air bnb or similar. Under the housing act the minimum tenancy length is 6 months - regardless of if you both agree to shorter. You would need to look down the holiday let or air b&b route.

How binding is the agreement on the moving date that far ahead? Can it be moved nearer the time to suit us?

The answer to this is (broadly) no, the completion date is written into the contracts at exchange.

You absolutely cannot leave anything in the property past the completion date, not you or your belongings their solicitor will not agree to it. In fact even asking will be a massive red flag.

when you exchange contracts the completion date forms part of the contract, so no you cannot change the date later on.

if you agreed to complete by a certain date knowing you hadn’t yet secured a property you should have thought through the rental option, it sounds like you hoped you wouldn’t have to rent. However at this stage you’re going to face up to the fact it’s a high possibility, if you can’t afford to do it then you’re going to have to pull out of the sale.

No idea where in Surrey you are, but here is an Airbnb near Epsom that’s available near your dates. If you can commit to eg 4 weeks some owners will give a long stay discount.

It is going to cost you something, though not £10k.

https://www.airbnb.com/l/kEHyPmzv

You can also try to make this your seller’s problem… push them for a date that suits you and your buyers.They have had a sale fall through and will be keen to keep you, and they may, for example, have local family to stay with.

Yes, we agreed to complete by the end of March, but the buyers are pushing to move in earlier, they initially wanted 5 March, then 21st. They would still save on the stamp duty on the 31st but dictate us an earlier date for some reason, almost conditional for exchanging contracts. All they have to do is rent a bit longer, they still have not given notice. We just want the latest date possible to allow us to either complete our purchase or minimise the cost of storage/rent.
It does seem strange that we have not found a property in time, but the circumstances were:

1. last year our sale fell through, and we lost our next house. So we wanted the assurance that this sale is happening, and considered renting. But a couple of weeks makes no sense, rental market is tough, and short rental is unrealistic to get.
2. At the time of agreeing the sale in November my husband had a heart attack and was in hospital for a long time. After that he had and still has a pneumonia. They have recently found he has a lung tumour, which is still under investigation. So all our thoughts and energy were directed at physical survival and worries about his health. Believe me, life only gets harder with age and things can happen unexpectedly.
3. We still need to move out ASAP because our flat is on the 2nd floor without a lift, and hubby has breathing difficulties going up the stairs with his chronic lung condition (he had lung cancer 2 years ago, which seems to have come back).
4. Which leads us to the next reason why we only just now found a property. We need a bungalow, not a house and definitely not another flat for certain reasons. There is a great shortage of bungalows in our area, the vast majority of them are either in terrible condition or vastly overpriced compared to houses. Plus the autumn/winter property market was very quiet.
5. We have maxed our budget out on the rare bungalow that we have found because there was a lot of interest in it. Unplanned, but it is exactly what we need, and fully renovated. Which left us without extra money for renting.

Life does not always go to plan, things happen.

Sounds like you have had a hard time, Op. Simplify as much as you can, which in my opinion includes arranging storage and an air b n b.

No get a storage unit

The difference between 21st March and 31st March is so negligible though @OldBun58

Realistically, your house purchase will not be ready to complete by 31st March that is obvious. So you need to find a rental or other alternative accommodation if you want the sale to go ahead not fall apart.

Sure, it would be reasonable for your buyers to exchange in early March and complete on 31st March. But that won’t solve the problem of where you will go and what you will do with all your stuff.

There’s every chance they will lower their offer right before exchange if it goes past the deadline and means they pay more! You need to keep that in mind.

A family member is buying as a FTB. They have to be out of rented by 23 March and have no completion date as yet. They want to complete by the stamp duty deadline.Should they be worried? There is quite a big chain involved. Also both parents are gifting money towards the deposit.

@OldBun58 they may not be able to rent just for another week, though - if they first moved in to their rental place on the 21st of a month, they may have to give exactly one month notice or be liable for another month.

Ot they may have started ringing round removal firms and 21st is the latest date available because of the rush to this deadline (this was a huge issue for us during covid when there was a general discount with a deadline)

We are not talking about completion past the deadline, are we? 28 March still gives them a stamp duty discount.

No, their rental date is the 9th, so they still have to extend it.

I have no idea of costs where you are, but the self storage facilities are much cheaper than removal companies would charge, DS has used one in the midlands to store excess furniture following downsizing and pays £100 a month, admittedly there are significant disadvantages, you have to move it all yourself or pay someone to do it for one. I imagine lots of people are trying to avoid the stamp duty increase

I've done this - broken the chain.

My removers charged about £20 per week per container. For a 3 bed house I needed 5 containers. So about £100 a week including insurance. You will have to pay another fee to deliver to your onward purchase. For me this was a bit less than the cost to remove to store.

I was very lucky in that I could move in with family for a few weeks.

It's all worked out really well and taken a lot of the pressure off.

Your buyers probably want to get completion agreed a bit ahead of the deadline just in case there's last minute problems. They have already budged from early March to the 21st, so you need to find a way to meet that.

If the bungalow you found is the most important thing to you in all this then you need to make it work.

You will also have piece of mind.
If you have no available cash you might need to look at a credit card.

I moved twice, once to my parents house and then 11 months later to our new build when it was finally ready. Removal men moved some things to my parents then the rest straight into storage. It incurred a cost obviously, but not as much as our sale falling through.

Cost isn't just about money, it's your time, your stress levels, your security.

When you quote for removals ask about storage as well.

Compared to the cost of removals, putting in self storage, then moving it all again it's probably competitive and will be fully insured.

We had to do this when our new property wasn't ready & put our things in storage with the movers for a month & stayed in a relatives spare room.

Start asking friends and family now if you can stay with them, save the cost of an air bnb

Sadly, there is no friends and family option with a spare room to stay. Parents died, children work overseas, we moved to a different area and so lost our true friends. Acquaintances would not help us.
12 years ago we stayed with the hubby's old uncle for a couple of months whilst getting a place. It was very kind of him, but very stressful for me as he made me feel very unwelcome and constantly asked me to do his housework that he was perfectly able to do himself, and asking us to pay his bills and shopping. Not a freebie at all but still made us feel indebted.

Of course they want a 10 day buffer. It will cost them £10k if that date is missed.
However, you are both equals in this. If you pulled out now, they will have to pay the increased stamp duty on another house. If they pull out now, you are back to square one.
I think I am with them on not being 31st. That is likely to be chaos day with everyone trying to complete. Offer a compromise somewhere between the 2 dates.
Is there any realistic prospect of your purchase completing in that time? If not, then you need to move plan b to plan a. Get calling now. I suspect though that you will find that the removals firms are being booked up so best get a wriggle on.

I would say if you’re staying in someone’s spare room for a couple of months @OldBun58 that it’s entirely reasonable for them to expect you to contribute towards the housework/shopping/bills.

If the agreement that you have with them is to complete before 31 March then I would push your move date as far back as you can within that time frame. Then, as others have said, if it's still not enough time you will need to put your stuff in storage (this will probably be cheaper than asking the removals company to store it, but check first to be sure), and then book yourselves into an Airbnb/local holiday cottage. Fortunately, it's the middle of winter so you should be able to find something fairly easily. We once had a 2-month gap between homes and that's what we did.

It seems like your buyers saving £10k is going to cost you a lot of money. Has that been phrased to them like that? They probably want to move more than you need to. What would be the consequences to you of your sale falling through? If it's not much i'd tell them you are not going to be bound to an arbitrary deadline on their part that will cost you money but you will continue to try and move as quickly as you can.

You used to be able to exchange and against the date, it'd be stated completion on or before x or earlier by arrangement. If this can still be done, I'd be tempted to say it was originally agreed we would complete 31 March, so more than happy to exchange for completion on or before 31 March. That way, they know it's secure and you know exactly how much time you've got yourselves.

The difficulty with no definite date is them giving rental notice and booking removals.

honestly, our chain nearly fell apart with the last deadline and that was when we all benefited from the reduction, so we were all motivated to get creative with storage options.

Maybe to protect their £10k they would contribute to the cost of a fortnight storage at the removals firm, or similar.

It’s very very close though, which is why they will want a buffer. Clearly.