To offer on a house as a no chain buyer but then try to sell my house first?

What if you drop the price, the sale gets delayed and then you have to use the bridging loan and you are selling it for less? It will be a double loss for you!

Just buy the house and use the bridging loan if you can afford it, and want the house that much.

If you sell your house in the meantime, you'll be able to pay off the bridging loan quickly, but if not, you're not messing anyone around.

It sounds to me though, like you're just trying to pull a fast one, and if as a seller I found out what you were doing, I'd dump you on principal.

So you'd be lying?

If you don't want to take out a bridging loan then you would be in a chain. I'd be very unimpressed if it was presented that my buyer was chain free and then suddenly a chain appeared...

This. I’m a former estate agent and yes you can hide it for so long, but the truth comes out in the wash and if you’ve lied, the sellers won’t trust you again.

We accepted an offer from a cash buyer who then decided they wanted to sell their flat in the past and it added months onto the process and very nearly caused the chain to collapse. I was absolutely fuming so I do think yabu.

Are you at the higher end of the market OP? This is actually pretty normal at the more expensive end of the market because there is less stock of the houses you might be going for and you have to make yourself attractive. I don’t see anything wrong with what is being proposed. You bridge and hope to sell in the meantime.

You'd be telling them because you'd have to disclose it to your solicitor, won't you? Also on what planet does one sell a house in 2-3 weeks?
I am in chain free set up, both of us want a quick sale. We are in week 8 and only just got to the final stages of enquiries. It'll be at best another week before the exchange.

The issue with no chain isn’t just about getting an offer quickly - we accepted an offer two days after speaking to the estate agent and from someone who viewed before we even went on Rightmove or anything.

That sale still took time to proceed with surveys and them sorting their mortgage etc. Quick off isn’t the same as quick cash.

I think the likelihood of you getting an offer on your house in 2-3 weeks is about zero. 😂 The market is just not like that right now, unless you went through one of those we buy any house schemes. No reason not to make an offer and be honest about your proceedability.

We are literally in the process of doing exactly this at the moment.
We positioned ourselves as chain free, but were honest and said to the estate agent we were planning to sell our house quickly which for us would be the ideal scenario, but we were able to proceed without selling our house.

We knew we could sell our house quickly as it’s in a very desirable area and totally renovated so it felt low risk to us. It sold within 2 weeks.

The estate agent asked us to have an affordability check done via their in house mortgage broker to check we could actually afford it without selling, which was fine.

We actually have a let to buy mortgage in place as our back up if our current buyer falls through. This was recommended by our mortgage broker so we can release some equity to buy the new house but looking like we intended to rent our current house out. We don’t but also worst case we could.

Although this was all sorted back in Feb before all the rates changed.

I hope this is helpful.

I think if you are a cash buyer you have to show proof of funds
(I'm assuming you mean cash buyer when you say no chain?)

I think you need to be honest about your situation so the sellers can decide.

Also if you aren't completely transparent, at the first hint of you being dishonest they could well ditch you and go with other buyers.

I would certainly be pissed off if chain-free became a chain because "well someone's buying our house now, so we are waiting for that".

I wouldn't accept your offer under these circumstances. Too much to go wrong, too much possible dicking about.

As long as you are prepared to stick to a schedule that would be possible as chain free and not start messing around.

We accepted an offer from someone chain free. Then midway they decided they’d rather sell first and started stalling. We went straight back on the market at the first delay and then when they came back again we went with a different buyer as all trust was gone.

But houses don’t sell in 4 weeks. They go under offer then it’s 3-4 months. Unless you go for cash buyers only. Even then they’d need to move fast.

There's no problem with you attempting a fast sale if you can get it, so long as nothing that happens or fails to happen with that sale affects the timescale of the purchase. If at any point you delay things for a day/a week/a month in your purchase because of some kind of issue with your sale then you were never chain free and you lied.

It doesn't matter how attractively you market your sale house, if the person who wants to buy it is in a chain then you will cause a nightmare for the person you are buying from, unless you stick to a "chain free" timescale and go ahead with the bridging loan - if you do that then all is well.

The sellers agent will often make enquiries and call your estate agent to establish your position. They won’t just go off your AIP, because that will only cover a portion of the purchase price. They will want to see where all of the funds will come from.

Also the potential to have ridiculously long chain vs no chain. I'd be annoyed if I thought my buyers didn't have a chain, then the ended up having one.

Have the sellers requested cash buyer or a speedy sale or is this just you hoping to appear more attractive to a buyer?

I think if they are in a hurry this would unfair because once you inevitably involved your sale and create a chain things will drag.

The best thing you can do is get yours on the market ASAP and get it sold.

Take the emotion out of this and treat it as a business transaction. What you’re doing is fine because you’re happy to go ahead regardless. A problem with searches or a conveyancer being really busy could easily add a few weeks to the process anyway.

We did.

We were totally upfront with the offer - we could buy chain free, but we were going go try and sell our house (not yet on the market) but the sales didn't need to match up, and we could buy before selling.

Just be aware if you do buy first, you also have to stump up extra stamp duty - which they will refund if you subsequently sell within a certain term - i think 2 years, possibly 3

We did exactly this. Our offer was accepted on the basis of a bridging loan, then we got an unexpected asking price offer on our house within days. We contacted the sellers, told them of our buyer but reassured them that we would still proceed with the purchase if our sale fell through. In the end it all went through seamlessly and the loan wasn’t needed.

If I was the seller and you'd represented yourself as chain-free, I'd not be impressed if your position changed and you had known this was going to happen- it makes you a different prospect to the seller if you're chain-free v's not.

You need to back up your statement that you are chain-free.

As long as you intend to push the sale through at their pace and use the bridging loan if your sale doesn’t happen then that’s fine.

Otherwise if you can hypothetically use a bridging loan- have no intention of actually doing it but will just drag your heels on the purchase, the. You are messing them around and being a dick