Exchange on completion day

[germanshepforever]

we are ready to complete next Friday we wre buying a empty probate house and we have first time buyers buying our house so not much of a chain. We asked to exchange this coming Monday to give ourselves 3 days prep like ordering removals ect however our solicitors haven’t answered when I say we want to exchange on Monday, we are in contact with our buyers and they say the same about their solicitors too. I rang yesterday and our solicitor said it’s fine we’re 100% agreed on the 3rd we can exchange on completion, has anyone ever done this is this normal practice? We exchanged 10 days before completion when we bought our first home so this is just really stressful to me but I can’t seem to drum it into our solicitors that we want to exchange before! If anyone has any experience of this and some words of reassurance would be greatly appreciated :) Thankyou.

I think exchange and completion on the same day used to be quite common. When I moved from social housing to my favourite house I told my solicitor I needed two weeks between because I needed to give notice and arrange things.

With my houses after that I had 2 weeks for each. Your solicitor works for you! Tell them you do not want to exchange and complete the same day. You also want to complete by noon! With this house I didn't complete until 4pm so it was just as well I wasn't moving in that day!

I did it in March and it worked very well. I was only selling though, and it was a probate house.

@user1471538283hello, Thankyou for your reply, I am going to call them today and tell them we need to exchange before completion so I can book removals ect they are really dragging their feet, that’s another thing we don’t want to pick the keys up too late as we haven’t got anywhere to stay and have a 11 month old so need to get beds up ect, thanks again 😊

We did and everything went smoothly. But I had trust in the vendor because I knew them. Without that it could have been very stressful. A short period between is much more manageable and a perfectly acceptable norm.

Yes, tell them you want a gap in between - as PP said, they work for you! Apart from anything else, until the point you exchange contracts, your buyers could pull out at any moment. Hopefully that won’t happen, but I can’t imagine how stressful it would be if it happened on the actual day you’re meant to complete and your house contents have been packed up. Also, I believe there’s usually an extra fee for same day exchange and completion, if that’s at the case with your solicitors, why should you have to pay it when it’s something you don’t want?

I too have exchanged and completed on the first day. My first purchase alone. I don't think I'd want to do that now tho, as I would want some kind of security.

Go ahead and try OP but be aware that some conveyancing solicitors work part time, or have so many cases they don't look at them all every day, and that creates delays in even knowing your instructions, and then to get the solicitor on the other side on board etc - it may be that you end up doing them both on the same day anyway. In your shoes I would try, but then also book my things in anyway, knowing that I could lose the money or pay fees etc if it falls through. Its worrisome, good luck - it probably will be alright tho but would be better a few days, then you know for sure.

Actually 'they' work for your mortgage lender and you.

We exchanged on the Wednesday for a Friday and that was nerve wracking
Exchange was delayed due to last minute issues (as it turned out the owners ex husband had an interest in the property so it needed his signature too!)

Not knowing whether the paperwork would be complete in time was scary. We were lucky that we had our other house for a couple more months as it came with the job.

This is called simultaneous exchange and completion and it’s fairly common.

BUT you don’t want that and it’s not for the solicitors to tell their clients they are having something they don’t want.

I would be telling my solicitor in no uncertain terms that I don’t want a simultaneous exchange and completion, I want a break of a few days in between.

Ive done it a few times but wouldn't do it again. First two times went fine. The last time we did it we were due to exchange/complete on the Wednesday (3 in chain) and my sale went through but the purchase didn't (because the solicitor above went for a long lunch)! We couldn't stay in our property as we no longer owned it, we were effectively homeless (single parent with 3 dc under 8 at the time) and ended up in a hotel. We couldn't claim back because the exchange wasn't done. We eventually completed next day. But the removals couldn't do is till 5pm (because they obviously had over jobs booked in), charged us extra for storage and time.
So last time I moved, with my offer I said I would offer on the grounds that exchange happened several days before completion and that completion didn't happen on a Friday (because that would have been worse).

We did it when selling a probate property but there is absolutely no way I would have done it when selling ours (in fact we had a protracted delay between E&C which suited us all perfectly).