advice on tenancy /accommodation needed please Post Reply

[mummy-short-legs]

Hi All

I would like some advice please.

Here's the situation:
We have been given a notice to terminate the tenancy agreement by the landlord of our current flat which we have been renting for about 6 years. They want to refurbish and then sell the house. We have been given two months.

We decided not to rent this time but to buy a property. Relatively quickly, we found a flat we liked, got our offer accepted, got the mortgage offer in place. However the solicitors are taking ages to do the conveyancing process and it looks like we're not going to be able to complete by the time we need to move out of our rented flat. We asked about their estimated timeline but no luck there - they can't promise anything definitive.

We asked the landlord for extension and were given a maximum of two weeks which most likely is not going to be enough.

What are our options?

I looked into renting temporary accommodation on Airbnb and similar sites - the costs are prohibitive and if we do that, given it can take months to completion, we won't be able to buy the flat anymore since we'll have to cut into our savings for the deposit  . 

Any ideas please? Any advice is appreciated!
Many thanks!


 

[mum_1980]

You could try looking for a place/room on gum tree. 

Or you could try https://www.spareroom.co.uk/

Have a look at this article which lists the best places to find flat/house shares https://www.helloacasa.com/acasa-blog/2 ... ouseshare/

Also, put a notice out on local groups on Face Book and other social media apps including NVN and someone might have a room they can rent to you at a more affordable rate than Air B&B which is a bit pricey especially if you need it for months.

Good luck!

[dudette]

Why is the conveyancing taking so long? Can’t you ask the solicitor to speed it up? When we bought our current house there seemed to be a lot of faffing around before exchange. Then came news that the chancellor was going to increase stamp duty so we told our solicitor to waive the remaining searches and we signed that day, saving about £60k in the process. Surely if you tell the vendor your circumstances and that you might have to pull out then it’s in their sides interests to speed things up too. Hopefully someone with more legal knowledge than me can clarify this.

[sebastianbear]

Hi. While your landlord is, of course, entitled to refuse a longer extension, I would expect that, were you not to leave, the process of eviction would take longer than the offered extension. Even if your landlord starts formal eviction proceedings, getting to court takes weeks, and your landlord faces the possibility that the court may give you an even longer time, especially if you have a good history, are paying rent and have somewhere else to move to on a specific date.
I suggest you go back and try again, bearing in mind that the landlord has valid concerns: not only will you delay the refurb, which could mean missing the spring market for the proposed sale, but also, as you haven’t yet exchanged, your purchase could fall through, potentially further delaying your departure. I suggest you get the best info you can from the solicitor and, if there’s a chain, the vendor, then talk to the landlord, giving the firmest date you can, ask for an extension until then, emphasising that you will continue to pay rent.
You don’t say how long the solicitor has had. Our experience has been that it shouldn’t take more than 6 weeks to exchange unless there are exceptional circumstances, and completion can follow quickly afterwards, if all parties agree. But there could be hold-ups outside your solicitor’s control. It’s worth pressing for detailed information. I wouldn’t be happy without a +/- estimation for exchange.
Best of luck

[mum_1980]

If you need to find somewhere relatively cheap to live in the interim then you could consider being a property guardian. There was a post on this recently.  

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