How long is too long to wait for a house chain to close?

[Bec9494]

Hi!

Me and my partner are first time buyers and had an offer accepted on a house 2 months ago.

Checking with the EAs, the chain is still not closed. How long should we wait before we start pushing for closure?

Being FTBs we don't really know so any advice is much appreciated!

Thanks 😊
Bec

All depends on how much of a hurry you are.
I gave mine only a week. But that was because we didn't have long until the stamp duty holiday ended and I didn't want to miss it.
But if you love the house then you might be happy to wait a while longer

It's whatever you are willing to put up with. Have your vendors found somewhere? Or is the problem further up?

I've had friends wait 18 months

You can't expect the seller to find somewhere and put an offer in and it be accept and so on and so on up the chain so soon.

People are not even getting viewings without selling their houses first and having a offer secured. That creates a queue.

For context when I was a first time buyer, before covid. I offered and was accepted in August and moved in the following April. I was willing to wait as I liked the house.

4-6 months is pretty standard.

Depends how long the chain is. If, in the current mark3t, you can't buy until you sell then giving your sellers 2 months isn't unreasonable but you then need to give their sellers the same and their sellers and on and on... depending on the length of the chain.

2m is not long.

we had a buyer in August '13. we couldn't find anything until Jan '14. our seller then started looking and we thought we were golden at the end of Feb when our buyer suddenly pulled out.
by then we had a 5 "people" chain that got broken in half.

back to open viewings, seller was ok to wait, their seller too as last in chain.
found new buyer in March. they were 3rd in the chain so that made it 6 in total.

everyone was fed up as our buyers' previous arrangement fell through too so everyone was pretty ready & keen!!

can't remember other details but we moved end of May '14.

hope this helps

sorry, we put up house for sale in August '13.
had buyer in Oct that year.

As above, it really depends. My buyer took 2 months to find mine, I took a week or so to find an onward purchase and my sellers have been a month already. I'm looking at other options but there isn't a lot decent coming to market where I'm looking.

I've already resigned myself to the fact it'll probably just collapse and I'll wait it out.

I have updated waiting after Almost three months as I had a deadline. The seller has now withdrawn the house completely. I'm now on my third house. I'm going to try chain free houses from now on it is so painful.

We accepted an offer beginning of April and still haven't found anywhere to go. There's just nothing on the market for us and we are definitely not being fussy!

Have you sorted your searches and survey already? I ask as from the point of our buyer booking the homebuyer survey the first appointment offered was 3 weeks later. She ordered the searches 7 weeks ago and still had nothing back.

I know there are 3 house above us at the moment, but nothing else :(