Happy first-time buyer with nuancesšŸ˜

Landlord Discussion Legal
1

Being a first-time buyer is fun indeed. Letā€™s say I never heard before about such a pleasant thing as ā€˜Chancel repair liabilityā€™ and was a little bit shocked. But itā€™s not a big deal.

The big deal is that I need to move out of the current rented property as the landlord sold the house. The agency(LL) already served me the 21 notice, so I have less than 2 months to move into my new house. And my solicitor said that he needs around 16 weeks to finish the buying process.

What would you do in my place? What options do I have?

I plan to do 2 things :

  1. Ask the agency to let me live here till the moment when Iā€™m ready to move into my first house

  2. Ask the solicitor if he is able to speed up the process for an extra payment and guarantee that he will finish everything by the time suitable for me.

How about that?

2
  1. highly unlikely - they have give s21 notice for a reason. However worth asking as there may be a deal to be done.
  2. not a chance. Too many moving parts outside of their control.

You could put stuff in storage and go air bnb or stay with family if circumstances permit

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3

You have little chance of speeding up a sales process, so in my opinion you need to negotiate with your existing Landlord or plan on finding somewhere to live inbetween. .

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4

I suggest you just stay where you are until you complete. The landlord selling the property doesnt end your tenancy. Neither would a s21. it simply means that the new owner will become your new landlord, or the sale will be on hold until you vacate.

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5

Thank you. Iā€™ll stay where I am now.

6

Yes, Iā€™ll try to negotiate.

7

I havenā€™t got anywhere else to stay. No relatives around or friends with enough space.

Iā€™ll stay where I am now, as Iā€™m afraid I donā€™t have much choice.

8

Update.

The letting agency(the letting agency iā€™m renting my current house from) asked me to send them some correspondence with my solicitor to prove that we are in the process of buying a property. They say they need it to show to the landlord.
I understand that the landlord needs to be sure that we extend our stay for a reason.

I want to send them this email:

Dear Name of the Agency,

Following your request to share some correspondence with the solicitor for you to pass it to the landlord, I am sending you a screenshot of some of it.

Please find a scan of the letter to/from the solicitor attached to this message.

When I know the completion date Iā€™ll agree a surrender on that day

And it looks like it will be possible in around 2 monthsā€™ time.

Till this time please rest assured that the rent will be paid as usual.

Kind regards,

Mr XXXX

Do you think itā€™s a good idea?
Or should I just ignore the agencyā€™s request, as such information may enable them to start pestering on my solicitor trying to speed them up?

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9

Yes, I think you have nothing to lose by that provided you redact any sensitive information.

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10

Thank you for your opinion. I really appreciate it.

Hopefully the searches wonā€™t turn up anything odd, and everything will be over in April.

11

Update

15th March the eviction notice period expired, and I paid my next month rent along with sending them the message discussed above. After a short while they just emailed me back this dry phrase ā€œThank you for your email.ā€

In two weeksā€™ time Iā€™m gonna need to pay the rent again, and I have such a feeling that shortly after that date the contracts will be exchanged and all the payments will be made.

Now my main concern is, if possible, not to end up paying rent after I move out.

12

You will need to serve your own notice as the landlords notice doesnā€™t end your tenancy. Follow the tenants notice clause in your tenancy agreement if there is one. If not, your notice needs to be at least a month and end on the last day of a tenancy period. You are required to pay rent until the expiry of the notice whether youā€™re still living there or not.

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13

I am on a rolling contract.
Should there be a specific form for such a notice or an oral one would do?

14

Everything should be in writing so you have evidence of it. The wording will depend on what it says in your tenancy agreement.

15

As far as I understand it can be served in any form (arbitrary form). If so, I will send an email to them.

16

By all means send smoke signals if you like.

But good luck producing evidence of that form of communication when things go pear shaped.

Email is a form of writing, but you need to make sure that your tenancy agreement allows you to send notices by email. Not all do. If not, youā€™ll need to actually send a letter.

With a stamp.

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17

I agree. Itā€™s better to play it safe.

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18

It must be in writing. It can only be served by email if you have a prior written agreement with the landlord to serve notices by email, (although I would certainly copy it by email). It must be unequivocal, (not vague) and name a specific date on which the tenancy will end.

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19

Ok, thanks, Iā€™ll get the letter ready.

20

I received a ā€œmortgage information questionnaireā€ from the solicitor to to ensure them that my instructions match with the lenderā€™s
requirements. They want me to fill it. It is mostly straight forward, but there are some things that Iā€™m not quite sure what to tell them.

Iā€™d appreciate if you guys spare some of your time to comment on the main points.

There are two questions which I would like to clarify:

1) Please provide your quote for buildings insurance and confirm that you will supply the on-risk
policy on exchange of contracts.
If you are arranging your own Buildings Insurance the interest of your Lender should be noted on the
policy. Before completion we will require sight of your Building Insurance Schedule and I would be
grateful if you could please telephone your insurance company and ask them to put in force the
buildings insurance schedule when I inform you of a date upon which exchange of contracts will take
place.

I havenā€™t got any buildings insurance yet. As far as I understand they want me to get it somewhere and give them a sort of reference number. Am I right? How long will it take me?

2) Will there be any persons over the age of 17 years residing at the property other than you?

And this one is a very weird question. Because I have no clue yet. I mean it is only me and my wife who are buying the property and going to live there. But we do have in mind to take another person to live in one of the rooms sometimes. We really do not know when he may move in. May be at the same day with us. May be never. May be it will be someone else at some point in future for a brief period of time or may be for a long period.

But, well, Iā€™m really at a loss what to answer, because the solicitor specifically mention the following:

Please note that you will be in breach of your mortgage conditions if you do not advise us of any
adult occupiers.

I just donā€™t know what to answer in the questionnaire. If I answer that there wonā€™t be any other adult occupiers, but by the time of exchanging contracts or after exchanging contracts the guy will let me know that he would like to rent a room in my house and that he will move in at the same day with us, would it be a breach of my mortgage conditions ? I really do not understand what they want from me.

I am not going to let the property, but I didnā€™t expect that it would not be up to me to decide if I want to occupy the property personally or I want to let it. Look at that text:

Although in many respects the interests of the Buyer and the Lender are the same (in particular they
both want the property to be acquired with a good and marketable title) there are circumstances in
which a conflict of interest may arise because information comes into our hands which you would prefer
us not to tell the lender, such as:
a. The price is lower than you told the lender (because this means that the property is worth less
than the lender thought)
b. You are receiving a Cash Back or other inducement from the Seller (again because this
suggests that the property is worth less than the purchase price)
c. You have decided to let the property rather than occupy it personally
d. Your financial circumstances have changed ā€“ for instance you may have lost your job (because
you may not be able to keep up the repayments on a reduced income).
Because we owe you a duty of complete confidence if a conflict of interest arises, we will ask for your
permission to disclose the circumstances to the lender. If you withhold permission, we must cease to
act any further in the transaction either for you or for the lender and return the lenderā€™s papers advising
the lender that a conflict of interest has arisen. This signifies that something unusual has occurred and
the lender will probably withdraw the Loan Offer

I never though about having Mortgage Protection. Can I have it at some point in future or if I donā€™t have it before completing of the purchase I wonā€™t be able to do so later:

If you are having Mortgage Protection to cover your mortgage payments and life premiums in the event
of critical illness and/or redundancy this needs to be put on risk on completion.