Prospective vendor not started house hunting

[Kipsy]

We're FTB, thinking of making an offer on a property; and EA advised that the vendors haven't yet found a house or even started looking.

Does this happen often?
How risky is it to agree such a purchase?

We are ok to wait a bit as its probably too late to expect to make the SDLT deadline, but I'm worried they may never find a house!

Also from the EA: "the seller will need to agree a purchase with a complete onward chain, before instructing solicitors for their sale."
I initially thought this meant they were not willing to move to rented, but the "complete onward chain" confuses me - does that mean the vendor is looking to buy from a seller at the top of a chain only?

I'm calling the EA later to see what they say but would appreciate any input. Thank you!

I think it's quite normal to build the chain from the bottom up...in some cases people won't take offers from people who are not ready to proceed.

It's certainly not worth paying for anything until the chain is complete

It's a bit pot luck until then you may get a seller who needs to move, eg work relocation , or you may have a seller who is hoping to find something nice out of boredom,

They mean that there needs to be complete chain formed before people start instructing solicitors and paying out money. So if your vendors buy something that is not end of chain, then you will also need to wait until that onward chain is complete. This is why house buying is a compete ball ache - it can take an age.

Chains are usually built from the bottom up as said. Plus at the moment with Covid a lot of people aren't able to physically view properties until they have an offer on their place. They are probably looking on Rightmove, but it isn't unusual at the moment not to have been viewing until they are proceedable.

And it's perfectly normal not to spend any money on solicitors etc until the chain is complete end to end.

Nothing unusual.

We didn’t start looking at houses until we’d accepted an offer on ours. We didn’t know how long ours would take to sell (this was 5 years ago when the market was a slower), so couldn’t commit to buying a house until we had a buyer. However, as soon as we had an offer we viewed all the houses we were interested in within 3 weeks, so it didn’t really delay our buyers.

This is normal.

The loose rule (though not always) is you can only really offer on a house once yours is under offer - otherwise you are not taken seriously.

They probably didn't start looking yet due to not wanting to see the 'dream house' and not be able to offer because theirs wasn't yet under offer.

You are in your right to tell the estate agent the rough timescales you are willing to wait for them to find a house. Once our house was under offer it took us three weeks to find a house, but then we had to wait another two weeks for those people to find theirs (we were in a chain of 3)

Often people wouldn’t let someone without an offer accepted view a property
Perfectly normal

Thanks everyone! Was feeling a bit jittery about this but I can see now it is normal (esp if they can't view without offer accepted!)

And be warned - I was assured my seller would move in to rental, and as I had a deadline I went ahead and instructed solicitors and had a survey done, only for the EA to say the very next day: 'oh she now says she won't go until she has found a place to buy'.

Completely normal so don’t be put off by it. Even if they had found the right place and put an offer in, the likelihood is that the seller would still be marketing the property in case someone was available to proceed sooner.