How long do you wait for sellers to find a house before chasing?

[Sparrow91]

We’ve managed to sell our house and find a house to buy within a week.. it’s now just under a month since we’ve had the offer accepted and we’ve already had the mortgage offer come through.

Our buyer is a FTB, and the seller is selling due to separation. As far as we know they haven’t yet found a new property.

DP already wants to start messaging and chasing for updates - in particular whether our seller has found a new property, and if so what the chain looks like.. but is it too soon? I don’t want to be that buyer who is a PITA!

This is the first time we’re selling a house, so have no idea what is acceptable.. and we have a ticking time bomb in the form of me being pregnant, so really need to be moving before I’m a waddling whale 🙈

We waited 11 weeks before our vendor found their property. We were 3rd in the chain and were worried about the people below us getting impatient so we tried to give a bit of an ultimatum after 10 weeks and it backfired. Seller panicked and took the house off the market, we were gutted.

Luckily 2 days latet before we'd even told the rest of the chain (wanted a day or 2 to get our heads around what we wanted to do and see what else was out there) their ideal property came on the market and they asked if we could ahead after all. By the end of the week they had their offer accepted.

It’s been nearly a month so completely reasonable to call the Estate Agent and ask for an update on their property search. Ideally you don’t want to start paying out for surveys etc until the chain is complete.

You may want to consider what you’ll do if they haven’t found anywhere either through lack of trying or not much on the market. Will you wait indefinitely or give them a deadline? They may be prepared to move to rented, but maybe not

@Fleurty oh god I don’t think I could do 11 weeks, we’ve already been warned searches are taking upward of 4+ months, so 7 months to move just gives me shivers! So glad it all worked out for you in the end - you must have had the patience of a saint! 😅

@ireallyamthewalrus unfortunately they are with purple bricks, and they are not very forthcoming with info - they encourage you to go direct to the seller so nowhere to hide! We’ve already been asked to pay £200 towards the initial surveys, which we’ve reluctantly done.. but any further surveys I think we will wait until we know they have something underway.
Good questions to think about too, I’m not so sure they would go rented as I believe they have children, but I guess a little further down the line we might be forced to ask the question.

Thanks for all the advice so far!

I’m not so sure they would go rented as I believe they have children, but I guess a little further down the line we might be forced to ask the question

I would be asking this question sooner rather than later. You can do so politely and without putting undue pressure on them. Something like:

Now it is coming up to a month since you accepted our offer and our mortgage and initial survey is underway, we thought it a good point to check in and ask how your own house search is progressing and whether the chain is nearing completion? If you do not find a suitable property in the next few weeks, are you intending to move into a rented property to break the chain and progress with your sale? We don’t wish to put undue pressure on you at this stage, but we are nevertheless conscious that our buyers are keen to progress and we are expecting a baby and would like to be settled before it arrives. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. Mr & Mrs Sparrow.