What do you think our chances are of buying this house?

[Palmtreeheaven]

The house is our dream house. I have no idea how I'll get through the next few weeks while we try to pull this off.

It was on the market for 6 weeks before we had our offer accepted. As far as I know, there was only ever one other interested party, and they made a fairly low offer.

The vendor has agreed to proceed if we eliminate our chain (we have our current home up for sale), and we can exchange in 4 weeks and complete 2 weeks after that!

He has put this in writing to our solicitor though we haven't agreed to this in a legally binding way.

Vendor must be under some sort of financial pressure though I am not sure why because they bought a new house without selling the one we're buying. In fact it has been empty for over a year!

We are bridging our deposit as our house hasn't sold yet. This removes the chain. Once we have evidence of this (and therefore our deposit), we can go ahead with mortgage applications.

I'm just unable to sleep or think about anything else at the moment. I can't see us exchanging in 4 weeks. 6 maybe, but not 4. Surveys and underwriting take time - 2 or 3 weeks, sometimes longer.

Does anyone have any advice on how to speed up the process? We have already asked for our searches to be carried out for example.

Do you think we'll get the house, or (my worst fear), could someone swoop in and buy it from under our feet?

Lots of local estate agents have asked where we're buying too - I haven't told anyone. Why would they want to know? If people know we're trying to buy this house does that increase chances of being gazumped?

I agree that it can be done but you need to research it thoroughly. There are lots of justifiable reasons why they might be in a hurry so it doesn't automatically scream 'suspicion' just don't get carried away.

Bridging for an indefinite amount of time would worry me. Might even be worth accepting the low offer you have when you do the calculations.

And I also don't get how you are paying for it in 6 weeks without selling.

Perhaps Google "bridging loan" if you
Don't know what it is?

You are leading with your heart. There are other dream houses out there. it sounds to me as if you are completely blinded by having fallen in love with the house to the fact that it has issues. You have asked the question why, having had the house empty for a year, the vendor is in such a hurry. Ask them again, then ask yourself. A lot of issues can crop up with a house that has been empty for all that time.
It all sounds a bit suspicious to me and of course he can pull out until exchange.
Having a bridging loan sounds like madness to me.

I don't see this happening in 4 weeks. The vendor is being completely unrealistic and I'd be inclined to see what happens if you say you've spoken to solicitors and there's no chance of getting it through in that timescale.

We bought with no chain either way (moving from rented, and the sellers had built their own house to move into) and it was supposed to go through in 6 weeks. It took nearly 4 months due to things outside out control - mortgage lender's solicitor being incompetent, something on the searches that looked like a problem but wasn't, something on the deeds that needed clarification etc etc.

Sounds like they don't want you to take the time to look at the house properly.

The quickest I've ever done it was 5 weeks and that was with a friend doing the conveyancing so that everything was dealt with as soon as the post landed. No bridging loan was involved though.

Don't panic. They aren't going to start the process again when they are so far along with you. You've already started the ball rolling and spent money on it, not just waiting for the bridging loan then starting the ball rolling.

We went through some hoops to make ourselves chain free for the place we're in now, and that was stressful. However I would not have put myself in the position that you are considering.

How expensive will your loan be if your house doesn't sell in a certain amount of time? How lucky by can you afford not to sell etc?

Long, not lucky!

I know next to nothing about what exactly is involved...but when we bought our house, it took 3 weeks and 5 days from the day we put in an offer to the day we got the keys in our hand.

Standard mortgage, not cash buyers. So sometimes it can be quick!

when we moved in 2001, our purchase went through in 5 weeks. but, we had already sold. so already had our deposit/morgage offer in place, and were living with family with all our belongings in storage. i was on the phone every day pushing things forward, it was a short chain, just us and the people we were buying from.

my mum moved a couple of years ago and their buyer tried to get her to sign one of those 'complete within ? weeks' things, in the end it all went badly because it was the buyer that was causing all the delays which meant it overran, my mum never signed the thing but the buyer still tried it on asking for compensation even though it was his fault they didn't complete on time.

I will add that a year ago we had real problems getting the survey (the one up from homebuyers) scheduled within a month due to such high demand.

The bank could easily take longer than that to approve your mortgage. My bank's target turnaround this time last year was 22 working days and our very simple mortgage took longer than that.

I think I am going to get on the phone to push things forward this morning! Thanks for all the experiences/advice so far.

We bought ours in 5 weeks (Scotland). 6-7 is usual here. It can be done.

We're on the verge of completing on a house. The vendors asked for exchange in 28 days (cos they put an offer on a new build the day after accepting our offer and new build developers usually require 28 day completion). I said yes, in theory, we'd work towards it - it was vaguely doable as we're chain free. We didn't exchange in 28 days! And the endless pressure I got from the vendors (via the agent) made it a thoroughly horrible experience.

In the end, we exchanged in about 7 weeks. Getting our mortgage offer through was the thing that really held it up. Everything else (searches, surveys, etc) was pretty quick (but no issues came up on the survey or searches). Bear in mind that if things do come up on your survey then you'll want to get further inspections (e.g. damp, roof, etc) done to clarify the extent and the cost of the work that needs doing. All that takes time.

As you've got a non-conventional financial situation going on, my advice is to use a (good, recommended) mortgage broker. Initially I went straight to the lender as our case was pretty straight-forward, but after dragging their feet for ages they ended up turning us down on affordability (I was stunned - as we actually have enough money in the bank to buy the house outright, so it made no sense at all). That took about 4 weeks of fannying around. Then I went to a broker and he sorted us with a mortgage within about 10 days. (Happy to recommend our amazing broker, if you pm me!)

I bet they are worried that if the property next door is given permission it will devalue their property, hence the rush. They're gambling on you not having seen the,planning application.

You can still object to the application. Anyone can object to any application.

Are you seriously planning to run with two mortgages and a bridging loan for an indefinite period? And can you afford it if that situation continued for a year or more?

Also bear in mind that if there are damp problems the mortgage company is likely to make it a condition of your mortgage to remedy them within a defined period - which will mean yet more expense.

I'm not sure if I've misunderstood but have your lenders said that they will give you:

Your current mortgage debt
plus
Your deposit debt (through bridging loan)
plus
Your additional mortgage debt on the new house (through bridging loan)?

Really? if so then you must be completely loaded with an income that way outstrips your borrowing on the two houses. You will have two houses at once on primary residential mortgages and no rental income to offset the cost.

Double check with your mortgage advisers.

I'm a lawyer so understand the processes involved. I think you're possibly misunderstanding what your mortgage advisors are telling you about your ability to borrow.

Have a good poke around the house yourselves too, I've known so many people who have discovered issues after moving in that didn't come up on the survey. Especially if it's an older house.

We exchanged and completed on the same day both times we bought a house. First time as first-time buyers & no chain it took 2 weeks, second time there was a small chain and it took 4 weeks. We've always had a mortgage agreed in principle before even properly looking at houses though. You just have to stay on top of it & nag everybody. Sometimes the estate agents can be really good at helping push things along, but others are completely useless.

The second house we went round to have a measure while things were progressing and ended up getting on with the vendors quite well - turned out they had no idea it was their solicitor who was dragging things out so they phoned them the next day & then things moved. Although I know a lot of people say don't deal with the vendors!

When moving for the second time, we actually ended up buying the third house we had an offer accepted on - our first two fell through for various reasons. But the house we ended up in is actually better than either of the other two anyway, so it worked out ok.

Good luck, keep your eyes wide open and get pushing!

Maybe the first house is mortgage free? We did something similar (without the time pressure to complete). We had one mortgage free house up for sale and bought a second house with a 80% mortgage where we did need some help to raise the 20% deposit and ended up using savings, the bank of MIL and some of an agreed £15000 overdraft. We ended up with both houses for about 6 weeks then paid off the overdraft and MIL and a very large chunk of the mortgage.

Yes the first house could be mortgage free. If the first house is mortgage free though it is likely to take longer than a couple of weeks to get a new mortgage approved isn't it?

You'd be crazy to exchange without a mortgage offer. You risk the whole thing collapsing and losing the deposit.

You couldn't exchange without the mortgage offer IME.

We owned a mortgage-free house and bought a second with a mortgage. The mortgage company looked very closely at our first property and wanted proof of ownership as you can only have one residential mortgage at a time. The houses being almost 200 miles apart didn't seem to be enough of a reason

Well technically you can exchange without a mortgage offer but highly unusual if you're relying on a mortgage to fund the house purchase because of the fact that they might say no and then you have to pull out and you lose the deposit

Surely that's what a bridging loan normally does? Lets you have both mortgages at once?

There are no bargains in the housing market.

Also, if a cash buyer or developer has not snapped up this unique dream house already then there is a reason why.

The only other offer was low? Hmmm.

Make sure you get a full structural survey not a home buyers one.

Find out exactly why they are in such a mad rush. It is extremely suspicious. Especially with no other buyers available. They should be falling over themselves to keep you sweet not making ridiculous demands. Very suspicious. They might be taking you for a mug.