How quickly must you find house to buy after accepting an offer on your house?

[totallywired]

I was wondering this because we are looking to move within in a fairly small area, there isn't always suitable something available at any given time. I guess if we didn't see something we liked fairly quickly we would have to move into rented? How long would it be reasonable to keep a buyer waiting?

We are selling shared ownership house atm in case that makes a difference.

No idea about shared ownership but....

I was a very flexible buyer - moving out of rented and could just give notice but the mortgage offer was for six months which I think is fairly standard. When looking, I asked about a property and they refused to show it as the owners had really specific requirements and couldn’t promise to go through with a sale in the time frame.
Talk to the estate agent in the area.

Well our buyers had to wait almost 5 months for us to find somewhere. We were clear the whole time though that we were only moving if we found the right house. So our buyers knew that upfront but if they’d pulled out we accepted that we would just have to go back on the market again.

Ok, that's great, thank you hopefully we should find something within 6 months. I was hoping to move in the summer hols next year, but I wonder if I am being unrealistic to think I can time it that precisely. It took us 9 months to move in here and there was no chain, but I gather it doesn't usually take so long?

I remember reading that average time for offer to exchange is 3 months. I waited six months to get my flat though which was fine because I was renting before. That could have meant my sellers found somewhere after 3 months though and it took them another 3 months to get in there.

Basically it depends on your buyers situation and how much they want your place and how much of a hurry they are in. Are they likely to be in a chain? I.e. They might be in a rush if they are selling and already have buyers as they don't want to lose them. They will not be in a rush if they are selling and do not already have buyers. If they are renting they will be in less of a rush but also able to move quicker most likely.

Also they will probably have to renew their mortgage offer if you make them wait longer than 3 months.

My post is general, I don't know how shared ownership affects things.

I dont think you can ask someone to wait until next summer! 3-6 months would be ok - as long as they know this from the outset.

bilbodog I'm not planning to sell the house yet, I am just trying to work out when would be the best time to put it on the market if planning to move next summer.

It sounds like January 2019 would be about right, whoever bought our current house would probably be a first time buyer as it is a shared ownership house.

It totally depends what position your buyer is in. We put an offer in on a house knowing there was no onward purchase for them, we needed this as there was quite a large chain behind us which was already well underway. Six weeks down the line they put an offer in on something else (I was fuming, their EA wasn't best pleased either). A week after that it turned out the property they'd offered on was rented and then tenants had only just been given 2 months notice. Three weeks later our buyer's buyer got fed up of waiting and pulled out and the chain collapsed.

If you are clear from the beginning about timescales and don't change your mind then people should be ok with it. It might be worth having a chat to see how quickly the EA thinks they will be able to sell your your shared ownership, that way you could maybe view stuff you like before putting yours on the market.

Our buyers waited 8 months. In thst time they pulled out but came back again.

I think you would run the risk of your buyers dropping out - it's a buyers market and there is increasingly more choice of properties coming onto the market. Not sure how this works for shared ownership though. Could you get a buyer and move into rented?

If you sell, keep your buyer! Move out if you have to. Buyers might look elsewhere and dump you and they are ending up in a chain and you might have problems with your vendor so the chain goes on and on. Buyers are valuable.

I guess we should be open minded about moving into rented, DH is against it though, but don't want to keep a buyer dangling or buy a house we're not sure about because we are under pressure.

I think buyers of our house may not have any other options though. Our house is amazing value because the rent portion is very low and the buyer would have the option of buying only a small percentage of the house if that is all they could afford. We live in a very expensive area, and this house was the only way we could afford to stay in the area.

Our buyers waited 4 months, they offered in February and we moved in June. We were buying a new build so they knew our timescales from the off and were happy to wait.

We stated at the start we were looking for a long term house. Our buyer said she was happy to wait. We took 6 weeks to find somewhere, had quite a wide area but we have high standards! Now our vendors are 5 weeks from our offer and not a word from them. They haven't sent anything to solicitors which we did do. I don't think everyone would hang around waiting but some will.