Pulling out of house sale

[Elz58]

AIBU to pull out of this sale? Is 9 weeks too long for a vendor to find an onward purchase?

We’re desperate to relocate to be closer to family, my unwell sister, a new job and for better schools. It took seven months and 4 price reductions to go under offer on our home.

It took us 10 days to find our onward purchase. We offered £5k more if our seller broke the chain and moved into rented, which he refused. We ended up paying asking price anyway to secure it . We wanted to start conveyancing process even though chain wasn’t complete, again seller refused to instruct solicitor until he’d found somewhere.

We made it clear in writing that we were happy to wait a reasonable amount of time for him to find an onward purchase, but we weren’t going to wait forever because we had secured a place in a now oversubscribed school for my son, and didn’t want to lose it.

Fast forward 7 weeks and he still hadn’t found somewhere. Our buyers are getting impatient. We tell the estate agent we’ll wait another 2 more weeks then start looking again, or sell and go into rented ourselves and pull out of the purchase.

Those two weeks pass, we saw an even better, cheaper property, warn our first vendor’s estate agent we’re going for a second viewing. Loved it even more after second viewing.

As I’m about to make an offer on second house, first estate agent calls to say vendor has found somewhere chain free.

YANBU: to pull out of our first sale, we like second property more, 9 weeks is an unreasonable amount of time to wait for onward purchase

YABU: you morally committed to the sale, 9 weeks is a reasonable amount of time to
wait to find somewhere to purchase

I've had it the other way round, paid over £1000 in survey and other fees and the seller decided to buy his wife out instead, I was heartbroken. What I'm saying is, the seller may pull out on you if he is digging his heels in, if he was desperate to sell he would find rented.

Be very mindful of 'willing to move into rented', OP.

That's easy to say, but there are no guarantees the sellers will actually do it when it comes to the push.

You're impatient with him not being able to do in 9 weeks what you couldn't do in 7 months?

Misses point of thread.

I'd be more worried about you buyers than your vendors, given how long it took you to go under offer. How come all these others are expected to go into rented but that's not an option for you? I'd get your sale done, move into rented and get your DC in the school and then the purchase time on either property isn't so stressful. And btw I wouldn't believe any vendor who said they'd move into rented. Easy to say, and easy to retract as it's a ballache for most people, which presumably is why you're not doing it.

We’ve agreed to move into rental so we don’t loose our buyer. We’re going to put our stuff in storage and use air bnb’s as it’s significantly cheaper than a 12 month let. The ILs moved into a Premier Inn for a month to break their chain. There’s lots of options when you’re dedicated to this approach.

If you’ve found a better house and have had issues with your seller I wouldn’t hesitate to try and buy the second property.

We were originally buying a probate property before the house we really wanted came back on the market unexpectedly. Our broker dealt with the address change on the mortgage, luckily for us the properties were on the same street and very similar.

It was disappointing for the vendors, I'm sure, but we had to do what was right for us. Sitting in my lounge right now, no regrets.