What's the longest house chain you've ever known be successful?

[KitKat1985]

Me and DH were just wondering this yesterday. Obviously the longer the chain the less likely it is to be successful. How many houses in a chain is the longest you've ever personally known to end in completion?

While we were looking at houses a few years ago, the EA told us of a chain of 24 that managed to actually complete.

A colleague of my DH was somewhere in the middle of a chain that was at least 10 long. Every house in the chain was more expensive than the one below it and there was a massive difference between the price of the bottom property and the price of the top one. When the sale of the bottom property fell through and the chain was threatened with collapse the top two buyers bought the bottom property between them so that everyone could complete.

We were in a chain of 11 once. There were hiccups and it was extremely stressful at times but everyone completed in the end.

We have now bought 3 properties the first two we were buying and not selling and the owners were just selling so chain of 1. All completed fast with no problems. Property no.3 chain of 6 with a divorcing couple at the bottom, we waited 7 months and in the end we pulled out of the chain to buy our house separately as our sellers issued us with an ultimatum, buy or lose the house. The bottom of the chain was uncommunicative the whole way through so we cut our losses and found new buyers.
We put our house back on the market and got another £25k for our troubles. That chain was a chain of 2 with an investor at the bottom and went fine.

I am in utter amazement that large chains complete. I have heard of the top buying the bottom in the past to enable completion but now you have to pay a higher rate of stamp duty on second property purchases its generally not worth it. HMRC were sat on £30k of our (stamp duty) money whilst we waited for our sale to go through.

Wow a chain of 24! I wonder how long that took!

Amazing as well that there are people out there who are in a position to buy a 'cheap' property at the bottom of the chain just to stop the chain collapsing!