We put our house on the market in April and completed in mid July. Attempted to put an offer on a chain free property a week before we exchanged but agents wouldn't accept until we had done so, cue lots of rushing around and us dropping the price of our house slightly to get it through. Anyway offer accepted, we moved out of our property into a relatives. We are relocating 200 miles away so its quite a big upheaval with 4 kids! The property was chain free and vacant and the agents had assured us we would be in in 8/9 weeks, just before school started in September. Everything from our side was done in 3 weeks, but the vendors solicitors (who was recommended by the agent and is apparantly known to be very slow by locals) still had not sent over the property info form and had failed to answer questions. The agents kept reassuring me that they were on to it. Our solictor eventually got some paperwork through and said as long as they send remaining bits we could exchange, again agent reassured us they would push vendors solicitors. The week we had believed we could exchange (week 6) our solicitor spoke to the agent who notified her that it might be a probate sale !? They assured her they would find out more from vendor but a day later i still knew nothing. Obviously by this point we decided to contact vendor by letter to see whether he could clarify as we were still in the dark. We immediatly were contacted by the agent who was horrified and promptly told us that they had known it was a probate sale all along ! We apparantly didn't need to know this as conveyancing runs along side probate and can happen in the same time. They couldn't care less that we were lied to and have told us that it is our fault for wanting a very quick sale rather than the regular 10-12 weeks. Our children will now not be starting school next week and our child with SEN is without a placement. We are also 9 weeks into staying with a relative with 4 kids and all of our stuff in storage, it's an absolute nightmare ! All made worse by the fact that if we had known it was a probate sale we wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole !
We are apparantly now waiting for the vendor to be granted probate and have been told random dates in September and October when they believe it will happen. We however have lost all trust in the agents and don't believe we will be moving there anytime soon.
We decided in the meantime to look at other property and we have found one that we really love. We enquired whether the buyer would consider rental if they hadnt found a property, so we could move in 6ish weeks. We are waiting to hear if they will accept our offer and go ahead.
We are just so conflicted, if we put an offer on new house we will have to pull out of the old one. Potentially the old house could be ready in 3 weeks if the probate comes through ( solicitors however have still not answered all questions though )but we are taking the gamble that they are now telling the truth, however I just cant help thinking there is more going on after receiving another email from the agent saying that there are delays due to holidays.
On the other hand we could get our offer accepted on the new property on the basis that they move when we are ready ( we offered more based on this) and then they might decide not to, in which case, i just don't know 
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Has anyone got any words of wisdom, we literally don't know where to go from here ?