Would you wait 6 months for a house as a FTB?

[MindatWork]

We accepted an offer on our home this week from ftb who are currently renting in the village (£5k under asking price).

They were keen to move ASAP (seemed to think they’d be able to get in by SDD) but the houses on the new build development we were looking at doesn’t complete until ‘autumn’ (we didn’t have an exact date at this point).

The estate agent explained and they said they were happy to wait, but hoped it would be by September as they wanted to take advantage of the smaller stamp duty reduction.

We went in the sales room to reserve our plot today and our house isn’t due to be completed until end of October 😬. We’re now really worried the buyers are going to get nervous and pull out, especially as the developer will be pushing us to complete quickly.

Would you be happy to wait 6 months for your perfect house? Housing stock in our village is limited - and with a new build at the top of the chain at least they know it won’t fall through.

We can’t afford to lose their offer as we’ve pushed ourselves on the new house. If we did lose them we’d have to find someone prepared to pay the same amount, and v quickly or else we might lose our plot.

I’m stressing that they’re going to decide 6 months is too long and look for something else. What would you do?

They did end up going past the end of the period hence the compensation. My point was more that we as FTB were not willing to wait 5/6 months instead of the 3 it was supposed to be, as opposed to the ins and outs. Sorry if that wasn't clear!

We waited longer than that. The chain collapsed multiple times and our sellers wanted something very specific in a very specific area. In total it took 14 month from offer accepted to exchange. We were FTB in rented and by the time the chain collapsed prices had increased and we couldn’t find anything else as good and were stretching our budget anyway. We’d already lost three properties so agreed to wait as long as it took them if they agreed to stick to the price agreed. We didn’t expect it to take 14 months though, they didn’t expect prices to rise so much in those 14 months. Our neighbours moved in the same day having paid £30k more for an identical property. The man admitted he tried to persuade his wife to put it back on the market and ditch us but she said it would be a horrible thing to do as we’d waited so long. I am still thankful to her many many years later!

@Ellpellwood sorry I was just being nosey as we were in a similar situation ourselves, not because I was trying to challenge you

It’s a tricky question. I wouldn’t wait. The problem is that you can’t be sure that your house will be finished in October. When we were in your buyers position we were reluctant even to offer on the houses like yours. Of course they said that they could wait but there is a good chance they will not wait even until September. You can’t be sure.
I would exchange contacts and sell ASAP and go into rental if I were you.

@kickergoes I see! We'd have pulled out to be honest but our AIP was going to expire. As we'd managed to get one of the last 95% mortgages it was looking like we'd need another 5% if we started all over again.

This is happening to us OP, buyer was able to wait until August now new build delayed - only by 2 weeks at the moment but we won't be asking the buyer to wait that 2 weeks- we sold in March so 5 months flexibility was amazing and don't want to take the Michael!

We are moving in with family for 2 weeks- also gives us a chance to get flooring and painting done in the new house before we move in