Worried we'll leave our buyer hanging whilst we wait for 'right' property? How long will they realistically wait?

[PepsiPop]

We live in a lovely village and want to move to an equally lovely village 7 miles down the road for lots of good reasons. Houses in our village are a bit like gold dust, affordable properties rarely come on the market... we mentioned on social media we were considering selling and house was offered on for full asking within 24 hours, with a second one in waiting. Problem is the village we want to move to is the same. We are very flexible about what we buy, as long as it is price range, we'll consider it - but our affordability is at the lower end of the market in the area even at £300k. My question is how long do you think the buyers will wait and what if nothing comes up? This is the first time I've done the selling and buying thing, so is this just the normal nature of the game?
We've got into all the local networks of where we want to buy and made it very clear we want to move there!

Hopefully if houses in your current village are very rare your buyers will be happy to be patient for you. Otherwise as a back up, would it be feasible to move into rented for a while to be in a great position to snap up a property in the new village when one comes up?

I guess it depends if your buyers are 1st time buyers or part of a chain.
Our buyer is re-mortgaging their property, letting that out and buying ours. I wouldn't say they were happy for us to sort out our (complicated) purchase but they did wait for us. They wanted to move beginning of Sept, we're actually going next week.
So, all depends is my answer.

If your buyer wants the property and the area is as in demand as you say, they may well be happy to wait a while. However, I would agree with pp and perhaps look at moving into rented temporarily as a back up if they get a bit twitchy. On the plus side, you'll then be chain free.

I wouldn't move into rented accommodation if not many houses come in the market in the village you would like to move to. At the end of the day, it may be a good few years before one that you could potentially afford is put for sale, but by then, you would have most likely spent a good part of the equity of your current house in rent.

How much would they be prepared to wait? how long is a piece of string? I know that our seller wouldn't have accepted our offer, if we had not had an offer in our house already. And I would have not been prepared to wait more than a 4-6 weeks for them to find a house as there would be other people in the chain bringing the wait to move to a good few months.