Vacant Possession denied

We’re actually renting at the moment ourselves Terryw so we’ll also need to give notice (We’re currently outside of our lease). I understand that the Vendor is wanting to minimise any financial loss but surely it isn’t our problem that he has tenants in there?

This is our first purchase so we’d like to move in for lifestyle reasons for the first 12 months and renovate as we go but it seems a little like the vendor wants to protect his own interests no matter what which I guess is fair enough, but so do we. I sent the solicitor an email this morning saying that Vacant Possession is a must for us, though we are willing to negotiate on extending the settlement if the tenants don’t find anything within the 42 days, we are flexible with that because being renters ourselves, we understand that these things take time sometimes… Within reason. He had the property listed for 380k, our first offer was 400k and as with a LOT of properties in the Illawarra over the past 12 months, there was a bidding war and he accepted our offer of 420k. We’ve had 12 months of missing out on properties and this one was again only on the market for not even 10 days so we’re hoping he comes to some sort of reasonable agreement.

I just heard back from the solicitor and this was her response:

‘They still haven’t agreed to mark the contract ‘vacant possession’, but will issue the notice to the tenant to vacate on the expiration of the lease, being 26 February 2015. Should the tenant still be in occupation of the property you will not be entitled to delay settlement. ”
The vendor is not willing to budge on this one and hopefully the tenants will vacate on time, however there is certainly no guarantee that they will be out in time for settlement.’

The fact that he is not at all willing to even accept our offer of a delayed settlement really irks me. We want guaranteed Vacant Possession as we do not want to wear the costs of any damage that these tenants may do (Intentionally or unintentionally) when they finally do move. I’ve seen this happen to friends and it is a nightmare for them. We would like to do a final inspection also and we can’t do that if the vendor still has tenants in there.
I think the vendor has made his mind up though and we may just walk away…. Pain in the backside when we’ve paid for pest and building, strata reports and solicitor fees etc

The first we heard about No Vacant Possession was when we went to sign the contract and we signed it on the condition that we are given Vacant Possession, which is when the Vendor came back and said he won’t agree to that. The marketing and adverts all stated ‘This property is currently leased until the 26/02/2015 at $370p/w’
What’s promising though is that it’s the same agent leasing it and she emailed last night saying that she is doing everything she can to find them another property…. But is that enough reassurance? My line of thinking is that if she is so certain that there will be no problem finding them something else, then why not just agree to Vacant Possession or at the very least, an extended settlement?