House chain nightmare - any tips?

[AET123]

Sorry folks, this might be a long one... firstly, a little background;
17th Dec 19 - accepted offer on our property from FTB
18th Jan 20 - offer accepted on our onward purchase
Mid-Mar 20 - chain complete, 4 properties in the chain.
23rd March 2020 - we all know what happened here...
13th May 20 - property industry reopens and we get confirmation that the woman at the top of the chain (let's call her Mrs Hunt) done NOTHING in lockdown despite solicitors working from home. So the final transaction at the top only just starts. First three are ready to go.
Mid June 20 - Mrs Hunt decides to buy somewhere and add a property to the chain. Offer accepted on an empty property.
27th July 20 - no one has heard from the new properties owner for 3 weeks but turns out it's a flat and they need to extend the lease.

Does anyone know what we can do to speed this up?

Our buyers have been waiting since December and the stress of the constant delays is starting to affect my health.

We've been watching the market and nothing is coming on close to our house in terms of location, price or suitability so pulling out will mean not moving at all which just isn't an option anymore.

Our EA is putting the pressure on to have Mrs Hunt move into rented or find temporary accommodation as she's caused all this. Someone that disrespectful has already decided they aren't going to help anyone but themselves so I'm not hopeful.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and come to a resolution, quickly?

Can Mrs Hunt's buyers find something else? At the moment it might be possible to make that happen relatively fast. They could tell the Mrs Hunt replacement that if they move into rented they can proceed immediately?

It’s up to the buyers of hunts property to put the pressure on. And so on down the chain.

Split the chain?

A conversation has been had about someone moving into temporary accommodation but all three of us in the middle have children so is not really appropriate.

As far as I'm aware, everyone in the chain is just as frustrated as we are and putting the pressure on. We don't know what else we can do...

Oh dear, poor you!

I don't want to add stress to your plate but we extended the lease on our flat a couple of years ago. The freeholders wrote to the 4 leaseholders and offered to extend the lease by 90 years for 3k, we were all delighted and all accepted and promptly instructed solicitors. It took over a year from that point to get it all finalised and that was with everyone in agreeement (although admittedly having 5 parties to the transaction each with different solicitors did slow things down). Extending a lease isn't a straightforward thing.

@ChewChewsBiscuitTin

Oh dear, poor you!

I don't want to add stress to your plate but we extended the lease on our flat a couple of years ago. The freeholders wrote to the 4 leaseholders and offered to extend the lease by 90 years for 3k, we were all delighted and all accepted and promptly instructed solicitors. It took over a year from that point to get it all finalised and that was with everyone in agreeement (although admittedly having 5 parties to the transaction each with different solicitors did slow things down). Extending a lease isn't a straightforward thing.

That's my concern as well! The only small benefit is that the free holder is the current owner of the flat, but it's still going to take an age to process.

It's so disheartening :(

I'm really sorry but whoever is buying mrs hunts house needs to go into rented or find another house.
It just doesn't sound like she wants to move particularly.
We've had a buyer before that had really slow progress. We left it for weeks then eventually put our house back on the market. New buyers were fab and we completed in 6 weeks x

I feel for you! We were in kind of a similar position earlier this year. We were in the middle of a chain of 3 (with FTB buying ours). The process started in Oct ‘19 and finally got sorted (well kind of) in June. The vendor we were buying from was a total waste of space. Both himself and his solicitors were extremely slow and about a week before we were due to exchange COVID hit. Before this he had agreed to go into rented as he couldn’t find anywhere else to buy. However, when the property market resumed he decided he wanted to buy somewhere instead. That wasn’t an option we could entertain as by then ours and our FTBs mortgage offers were close to expiring. To keep our sale we ended up going into rented and the purchase ultimately fell through as he wasn’t even remotely interested in actively looking for somewhere.
The whole saga was extremely stressful and put us under a lot of pressure.

I don’t think there’s a lot you can do apart from someone in the chain that’s willing to break it? When you’ve got someone as selfish and as hard-work as that at the top, putting the pressure on won’t achieve much tbh. It doesn’t look like this is gonna resolve itself very quickly.

Oh dear that really could delay things. Not happened to me but took ages for a very good friend of mine to extend the lease in the flat she lived in with the freeholder who lived downstairs. (She was doing this in amongst selling and fortunately her buyers waited.) It's all more back and forward with solicitors so another added layer.
The problem will be with the FTB who may pull out with the length in delay and getting cold feet, reading about the market, job losses, etc. etc. But they may also really, really want your house and hold tight but realistically they are not going to wait months and months for this to be sorted out. The obvious solution is "Mrs Hunt" proceeds and goes into rented. But is Mrs H going to be that reasonable?

If you really want this to work, then someone needs to break the chain, ideally the buyers below Mrs Hunt. So that means they go into rented, move in with relatives, or buy the house at the bottom of the chain (which is rarely doable). Otherwise, it looks like Mrs Hunt's buyers will need to pull out and find somewhere else. I hope it works out for you OP.

My freeholder managed to die during the process of extending my lease. That spoiled things a bit.

Our FTB have so far been really understanding and patient, we've been really fortunate with them. We're also talking directly as well as we exchanged numbers which eases some of stress.

I agree that someone needs to break the chain somewhere and as some of you have posted... looks like the best solution. We're just so reluctant as it's so risky. :(

Based on some of your lease extension experiences I don't think we'll be waiting for that to get processed before we move...

Keep your fingers crossed for me that we all come to a solution!

Let us know what happens, OP. I hope it's a good outcome.

Re lease extensions... we were in a chain last year when we accepted an offer on our house from someone who had to sell their flat. About 10 weeks after we had accepted their offer we found out that they had to extend the lease on their flat. But by then the process had nearly completed and it took probably 3.5 months in total to do. So it can be a quicker process than someone mentioned upthread.
Still way too long to add to the timeframe you are already in, this must be so stressful! Agreed, someone has to consider moving into rented or similar to break the chain.
I hope you get it sorted!