Time between Compromis and completion

[vickybear]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the useful help I have received in the past on this forum.

Please can I ask that on this occassion you only respond if you are absolutely sure of the info being correct rather than your understanding of it....don't want to sound rude but it involves a lot of money!

We are currently negotiating a house purchase and have hit stalemate as the vendor wants slightly more than we can pay. The house is being bought with a lump sum of money currently earning interest. The only way we can find the extra is to extend the completion date by as long as possible, thus allowing the lump sum to actually earn the extra. We are not in a hurry to have the house as we already have another which we live in.

When we bought our current house the agent asked us, some time after the initial compromis, to agree a completion date so we know we don't have to agree to this up front.

Is there a legal timescale in which we HAVE to complete once the compromis is signed? The vendor has inherited the house so we won't be holding him up as the property is unoccupied and in poor repair. We would want to try to hold out until January / February which would be 5 to 6 months from initial signatures.

Thanks in advance.

[Sunday Driver]

There is no legal timescale between signing the compromis de vente and signing the acte authentique.

The timescale is subject to mutual agreement between yourself, the seller and the notaire and the proposed final signing date will be inserted into the compromis before signature.

The lack of rigid legal timescales allows things like conditional clauses and the like to be completed.  In some cases, planning permission can take a number of months.  Furthermore, if you purchase a new property "off plan", then you could be looking at a year or more between compromis and acte.  In fact, in such cases, the 5% deposit is reduced to 2% if the house takes between 1 and 2 years to build, and reduced to zero if longer than 2 years.

Of course, as this involves a lot of money, you may prefer to obtain a simple yes/no confirmation from your notaire, rather than rely on a casual forum pundit like me being "absolutely sure of the info being correct"......

 

 

 

[Tony F Dordogne]

I would have thought that to be absolutely sure and to safeguard your money you should talk to the notaire involved and get an understanding from him/her of the latest date the vendor is willing to complete.

[vickybear]

Tony / Sunday Driver,

Thanks for both your suggestions re: Notaire. The reason I haven't asked the Notaire involved is that I don't know who it is as a consequence of not agreeing a price. I don't want to waste the vendors time agreeing a price we cannot meet, hence the question on timescales.

Sunday Driver - my question was not intended to belittle forum members comments, although I get the feeling you thought it was? Sometimes on this forum it is fine for others to say what they think and opinions on a subject are welcome. On this occassion I needed a definitive. I wasn't trying to be clever or insulting to other users or in any way derogatory of their comments.

Thanks again for your input.

[Gardian]

Vickbear  ...............

SD is absolutely right, and I think that you have to establish who the notaire is in order to get a date (whatever one you can agree with the vendor) built in to the compromis.  If you want it to be as long as possible, why not ask for (say) 6 mths (i.e. 1st March) and see whether your vendor will go along with it?  It has to be set in stone upfront though.  Could however be varied with the agreement of both parties close to the date, if that need arose. 

With our purchase, it was 9 mths, but this was v unusual.  Agreed by dint of our vendor being British and understanding the difficulties of completing in the UK - happily done & dusted in 5 mths.

p.s. For what it's worth, I didn't see the very specific wording of your question as being belittling, nor SD's reply as being a 'pop'.  

 

[Judie]

Contrary to what Ian says, the compromis date does not have to be set in stone up front. ( tried to reply with a quote but it didn't work ).

The date for completion on the compromis is just a guideline date, a date by which the acte de vente should take place, not must take place. Many's the time in my agency  where this date is varied either forward or back, depending on circumstances. I always tell my clients not to make any final travel arrangements etc until I have had final confirmation from the Notaire.

 

[Sunday Driver]

Judie's right.  The completion date is usually a target date and is often expressed as DD/MM/YYYY "or later" - allows the notaire extra time in case of unexpected delays in the conveyancing process.

Vickybear:

Here's the smiley I missed off the end of my original post........[;-)]

 

[Rob Roy]

When we bought we signed the Compris in Sept and the Acte was dated for December (15th I think, but can't remember). Due to the French bank keeping us waiting for a decision re.a mortgage, which they then rejected after 8 months (we changed banks and got one in 6 weeks!) we did not actually sign until the following May. Our estate agent was very good at keeping the vendor informed - this was also an inheritance sale so they were willing to wait. So it is possible to have quite a long period between the two signings.

[vickybear]

Sunday Driver.....here's one back    [:D] 

[Gardian]

Well fine, but if you accept some of the advice offered and sign a compromis with a date for completion (say) 2 months hence and you then simply ignore it (because you want your capital to earn more in order to fund the purchase), then I believe you are potentially skating on very thin ice. It was made very clear to us when we signed the compromis, with the most serious face that the Notaire could muster, that our deposit was liable to forfeit if we were unable to complete on or before that date.

Rob Roy is quite right in that delays in obtaining mortgage funds is a legitimate reason for delay and it was a standard clause in our contract, though not needed.  Similarly, I have no doubt that dates are often moved / ignored because it suits the vendor as well (he / she can't find the property they want, etc).

Let's put it this way, if I was the vendor and the nominated completion date came and went, and I found out that you were hanging it out because you wanted your capital to earn a bit more, I'd ask the notaire to press for forfeiture of your deposit.  Broken contract.

It just seems an unnecessary risk: if as you say, the property is an inheritance, the vendors may well be perfectly content to agree to an extended completion. On the other hand, they may have plans for the inherited proceeds and be less than ecstatic at a further delay of 3+ months.

As you said, it's a lot of money - and your deposit.      

[Coco]

Some friends of ours put their house on the market on Easter Saturday and had an offer for the full asking price within three days which rather took them by surprise as they had expected it to take at least several weeks, if not months, to sell.  They had planned at least one more year of holidays in their second home!  So although the compromis was signed in April they put in a provisional date of not before October.  They are over this weekend and saw the agent to confirm a completion date of 25th November.  So it is possible to confirm the completion date after the compromis has been signed and if you haven't even signed a compromis yet, looking at our friend's timescales, January/February next year shouldn't cause a problem.

[Rob Roy]

When we bought we signed the Compris in Sept and the Acte was dated for December (15th I think, but can't remember). Due to the French bank keeping us waiting for a decision re.a mortgage, which they then rejected after 8 months (we changed banks and got one in 6 weeks!) we did not actually sign until the following May. Our estate agent was very good at keeping the vendor informed - this was also an inheritance sale so they were willing to wait. So it is possible to have quite a long period between the two signings.

[P]

Vickybear

From the replies you have received it would seem to me that, if you do decide to proceed, you need to put in place the means of borrowing the shortfall in case it is needed.

Paul