Sale Agreed on House - when to give notice renting!

sulli

Hi All,

Just looking for some advice. We have gone sale agreed on a property, survey being done today and bank valuation in coming days. Have been informed contracts will be with solicitor next week. I know the process can vary time wise from 6 weeks to any amount of time for contracts!

Question is, when do you give notice to current landlord? By law we have to give 8 weeks as we are there more than 2 years but less than 4 (4 in december!) but as have 2 kids dont want to shoot ourselves in foot in case something falls through on house. What do people typically do?

Browney7

sulli wrote: »

Hi All,

Just looking for some advice. We have gone sale agreed on a property, survey being done today and bank valuation in coming days. Have been informed contracts will be with solicitor next week. I know the process can vary time wise from 6 weeks to any amount of time for contracts!

Question is, when do you give notice to current landlord? By law we have to give 8 weeks as we are there more than 2 years but less than 4 (4 in december!) but as have 2 kids dont want to shoot ourselves in foot in case something falls through on house. What do people typically do?

Talk to your landlord - it's likely he'll have no trouble re renting it anyway so he may be agreeable to shorter notice when you know for definite the sale is going through

sulli

thanks for the reply! I think that she will be ok, but at what actual point before the contracts are signed can you be confident that nothing will fall through?

Jake2

You cant be confident- My house sale fell through day before we were due to exchange contracts I had already signed and was told to expect to be moving in 2-4 weeks.

Thank god I did not hand in my notice as would of been rightly messed up . It made we wary second time around and I didnt tell landlord till I knew they had signed and my bank had also issued the mortgage.

I only gave them 2 weeks notice and told them to keep my deposit as compensation. They werent best pleased but at end of the day they will rent it again in a heart beat and I left it spotless. I didnt think the risk was worth it . Even if contracts and signed and its a done deal the moving date can change around and you dont want to end up having to move out of the house and no where to go.

sulli

That is my fear also, with kids and lack of family homes, we may have to take a hit on losing the deposit. Don't wanna leave the landlady stuck either as she has been decent enough throughout renting!

Jake2

sulli wrote: »

That is my fear also, with kids and lack of family homes, we may have to take a hit on losing the deposit. Don't wanna leave the landlady stuck either as she has been decent enough throughout renting!

Yeah its a hard one to juggle, I also have young kids and just couldnt risk not having a roof over their heads. The date I thought was a certainty was even pushed out by a week you need a nice landlord who would accomodate you. But when it comes to having to give 8 or 12 weeks notice you just dont know that far in advance were you will be in the process at that point.

My first sale agreed was about 14 weeks before we were in a position to exchange contracts then it fell through second the whole thing start to finish was 9 weeks

physioman

sulli wrote: »

That is my fear also, with kids and lack of family homes, we may have to take a hit on losing the deposit. Don't wanna leave the landlady stuck either as she has been decent enough throughout renting!

We bought a house last year. I wouldn't inform landlord until I have keys of new house in my hand. We ended up keeping the rented house for a month but worked out well because I was able to go back and forth and do bits and pieces to the new house. Gave me a months breathing space to sort new house out. Yeah you'll be paying months rent but in the long run it will be worth it

zedhead

We initially went sale agreed on a property last year just as we were coming up at 4 years into our rental, which would have seen a huge notice period. We called our landlady and had a chat with her about it and she agreed that when the time came 4-6 weeks notice would be sufficient. That sale ended up falling through after 8 months of sale agreed so we are glad we never gave her our official notice.

We went sale agreed again in June this year of a different property and were meant to close last monday but things got delayed. We had given her the months notice when contracts were signed but had to extend that by 2 weeks and she was fine with it. We are lucky we have a decent landlord, but on the flipside we have been very good tenants too and kept the conversation open through the whole process. She knows she will have no issue rentitng it out again and will prob need to give it a coat of paint anyway before she puts it on the market, but she has been very decent.

Worth talking to your landlord and seeing where they stand.

Snoopy1

Id talk to landlord. I was.in my rental 4 years so would have had to give a lot of notice. I gave 4 weeks once I knew I was getting house. Turned out to be 8 weeks, but landlord was quite understanding and I paid a daily rate for any time I stayed over.
Landlord said to me he would rent my place in a heartbeat, thats the market nowdays, so he wasnt to fussed when I left as he was still getting money

the_syco

TBH, when you get the keys. If you give a date, and something goes sideways, or you find the house needs work done to make it habitable, you may have to move out before you have a house to move into.

pansophelia

We've been in our current rental house for nearly ten years and went sale agreed in July. We gave two months notice at the beginning of August, just before we were due to sign contracts. This was a massive mistake. We've now run into major delays, and there's a possibility the sale may still fall through.

We tried to revoke, but the landlord had already made arrangements to take a few weeks off work and had arranged renovations to the house. We've come to an arrangement and we're staying in the house at a significantly increased rent on a week by week basis, but will have to move out for a few days for some of the renovations.

I can't describe the stress or lost sleep that this mess has caused so would certainly tread carefully. If you've a good relationship then talking to the landlord as others have suggested is a good idea. Hope all goes well!