Our buyers just pulled out.

[HopeAndDriftWood]

I’m gutted. I can’t even think of anything I can do to try and stop the chain from collapsing...

They were an investment buyer, from last year when we almost moved but the sellers pulled out the day before we exchanged. Everything seemed fine until today... their solicitor has emailed to say they can’t proceed as they can’t fund the purchase. I think it’s to do with furlough.

We’ve contacted estate agents, one came out today and valued, and the agent who listed for us last year are supposed to call me back tomorrow. I’m hoping we can get listed pretty quickly, and we’ll do all we can to accommodate viewings etc...

Is there anything else I can do? I’ll phone the estate agent and let them know tomorrow, but I suspect the sellers will list their house again as soon as we do. I’m so gutted.

No consolation but I expect many more sales will fall through, the surge in interest we first saw post lockdown has fallen away, people are realising that businesses are not getting back to normal, more and more won't be returning to work post furlough, and the oven ready Brexit deal doesn't exist.

Do you need to move for a specific reason, can you make your current property work for you, or do you need to be in a different location?

That is gutting OP. Especially after your first round of awful luck. Why did the seller pull out back then?! What a shitty thing to do..

I’ve seen countless houses come back on the market recently. It’s horrible to see. We are close to exchange & it’s something that’s leaving me very on edge.

I’m so sorry, a virtual hug from me. I hope you can sell again soon or as PP said, anyway you can think about making your house work? If, god forbid, anything did happen with ours, we’ve decided we’d stay put. Our house isn’t ideal but it’s upgradable & we could make it work if we had too. We are on school app deadline, we either move by end December or we stay (relocating slightly).

So sorry to hear this. I can imagine how upsetting it is.

Sellers wouldn;t always pull out in this situation, OP.

It depends how active is the market in your area and is it a tpe of house that sells quickly. If so, of course sellers would give you a chance for aboutt 2 weeks, I'd guess as some solicitor work has probably be done and you may get an offer after the 1st day of viewings, so may even be sooner. Does depend how long into the pricess you both are.
When my 1st buyer pulled out, my solicitors took two weeks to send new drats to the next buyer, do due diligence etc, it's a faff to start anew / add to sols costs.

Oh gosh how frustrating for you.

@MoirasRoses we are also at the point if exchange waiting for our buyer to sign his contract. I’m incredibly anxious waiting for it to all go through. We accepted the offer in July!

Thanks all... had a rough night trying to work out if we could stay, but we can’t really. We’re in a one bed apartment, it’s lovely but in a period conversion so not extendable at all. We both work from home now, our offices won’t be reinstated, so we’re always in the same room; and we want to TTC. The new house is extendable and would be a better place to wait it out... but we run the risk of it not selling, and then looking like it’s failed to sell two years consecutively.

Last year our chain was all agreed in late October, but in November the sellers decided they wanted one final Christmas at “home” before moving on. The people they were buying from wouldn’t wait, so they then had to find a new place to move to, and couldn’t find anywhere. It was an expensive and stressful nightmare.

Estate agents seem to think if we knock £20k off the asking price from last year, it’d sell quickly. That hurts a bit, but we could make the sale work still - so I’m going to call their agent today.

Wish me luck! And good luck Moira and thewine

@HopeAndDriftWood How frustrating for you, I really hope you can make it work! Good luck x

Good luck to you, how absolutely gutting. This happened to us when we were days away from exchange.

Can your estate agent speak to the other agents too and give them the same message about yours selling quickly to aim to keep the chain together?

It will still be quicker and cheaper for everyone in the chain if you're the only one that has to find a new buyer so that goes in your favour. Fingers crossed.

This happened to me and I got a new buyer really quickly. Put it back up with two estate agents and nag them for viewings. Your seller may wait for you

This happened to our buyers when we were selling our last house. We gave them nearly 3 weeks to find a new buyer but then put it back on the market when they hadn't found one by then. The market was really buoyant at the time and we got three

Pressed sent to soon..
we had three offers so proceeded with one of those..
Anyway, point is that we did give the buyers a chance to find a new buyer. They had to drop the price to get a new buyer, so be prepared to have to do that..

Oh my god @HopeAndDriftWood - why on earth would anyone lose an entire house chain to spend Christmas in it?! I’m a huge fan of Christmas but this will be the second house I hopefully move into where it’ll be quite close. Our current house was 23rd December 🙈 That’s sentimentally gone completely mad.

Good luck to you, I really hope it all works out 🙏🏼