How long is it acceptable to keep your buyers waiting while you find your new house?

PolypGrunterPulpit · 2021-08-29T16:02:45+00:00

Everyone I speak to in real life tells me you should accept an offer on your current home before looking for your new one, so that you're considered a good catch when you make your offer. Makes sense, but surely your buyers wouldn't wait for too long. Has anyone experienced this and felt pressured into offering on somewhere you weren't that keen on just to keep things moving? Or had to pull out because the buyers wouldn't wait?

umbel · 29/08/2021 18:31

We have felt pressured to move into rental (which we are doing in October). We accepted the offer on our house in February. Not pressured by our buyers so much, as they have been very patient, but by the difficult market at the moment. We want to move, we simply cannot find or secure anywhere so this feels like the only choice we have left.

Porridgeislife · 29/08/2021 18:38

We would have waited 6 weeks for the selle, after which we’d start looking, as we’d put ourselves in rented & were otherwise good buyers (we are buying in a bracket where there’s reasonable but not excessive demand).

One owner did her own viewing and kept saying “I’m not sure why we’re moving, really”. That killed it for us as I had no desire to put myself into a chain with someone who wasn’t clear on how/when she was going to move.

Eastie77Returns · 29/08/2021 18:41

I have been waiting almost 2 months for our seller and am now viewing other properties.

De88 · 29/08/2021 19:03

Not being allowed to view anything, anywhere until we had an offer on ours made things really, really difficult as a starting point, but we got viewing straight away. Every house we were really interested in was sold before it was even advertised (like ours) so would appear online as Sold STC. Every house we did manage to view, and put an offer on, went to bidding wars at which we'd lose. It took nearly 5 months to get an offer accepted for a house we're happy with. We weren't even being picky- we even viewed the proper shit houses that needed hella work, in dodgy areas and even they sold.
Its been a shit time for everyone tbh. Depends where you are and how things are moving, but if someone round here said they would only wait a few weeks for their vendor to find somewhere else before viewing again I think they'd be very stupid to do so. There is pretty much nothing at all on the market here.

SparkyTheCat · 29/08/2021 21:18

I think communication is key here. Our vendors were in this position, and (it turned out) were frantically trying to find somewhere, but from our point of view they just went quiet for six weeks after accepting our offer and we had no idea whether the sale was even still on. Once we knew the situation, and had an update every so often, we were happy to wait for them.

EverydayCook · 29/08/2021 21:21

We’re very motivated to move, but there is nothing, NOTHING, to buy. Like PP we’ve been in a bidding war on an off market property, and anything that comes on is either pre-sold or wildly over priced and won’t take an offer. We’re can’t even go into rented as there’s nothing to rent either!! Our buyers are probably going to try to pressurise us but short of moving in with my mum and making ourselves homeless (no way) there’s nowhere to pressurise us to go…

Cupidity · 29/08/2021 21:24

We bought 10 years ago during the financial crash, so things may have changed since then.

I think it took our sellers 5 months to find somewhere to buy which seemed like forever. But.... It was part of my offer that I could be really flexible on timescales, I was a cash buyer living with my boyfriend so could move as quickly or as slowly as they needed. It meant they went with me as a buyer even though others offered more money. They found somewhere chain free so we had a really short chain of just us, which meant that once they did find somewhere everything went through scarily quickly.

czycoup · 29/08/2021 21:31

Think it depends what sort of market it is. When we bought it was a sellers market so we waited 4 months for our seller to find anywhere. We were first time buyers and not in a rush so we could afford to wait. Plus the market was going up so much that we couldn't have afforded anywhere in our area and was lucky our sellers didn't increase the price.

When we sold it was a buyers market so was expected to have an offer elsewhere to attract buyers. But then our sellers were funny about us not having an offer on our place but luckily we wrapped it all up in a day and all moved 10 weeks later. (Short chain)

TakeYourFinalPosition · 29/08/2021 21:31

We waited eight weeks in March… in the ninth week, the vendor found somewhere to go, but our buyer decided it’d been too long and pulled out. We didn’t mind the wait, but the vendor was clear upfront that they wouldn’t break the chain, and kept us up to date every two weeks or so, so it didn’t feel like they’d forgotten us or changed their minds!

This time we accepted an offer and found somewhere the next day, and our seller had already been buying elsewhere, so no risk of it happening again!

readytosell · 30/08/2021 18:08

I ended up waiting 6 weeks, and then another 3 before the chain completed.

I did start looking at some other properties after 4 weeks though, but I did know my sellers were only looking in one specific area. So it was more an insurance just in case it took too lone.

TulipsfromAmsterdam · 30/08/2021 20:51

In our area there is so little available a buyer lucky enough to have an offer accepted has no choice but to wait. We accepted an offer last Monday and there is nothing available to buy. If our buyers pull out they would be back to square one and we would sell within a day or two so everyone is having to be patient.
Anyone else hoping for September to bring lots of houses for sale once schools back. Used to be a great time to market as people wanted to move in time for Christmas though unsure it's even possible now due to delays everywhere.

PenguinWings · 30/08/2021 21:44

We've been waiting since March. I'm starting to wonder if we'll be in by Christmas but hopefully it will all happen at once.

Eastie77Returns · 31/08/2021 13:38

@SparkyTheCat

I think communication is key here. Our vendors were in this position, and (it turned out) were frantically trying to find somewhere, but from our point of view they just went quiet for six weeks after accepting our offer and we had no idea whether the sale was even still on. Once we knew the situation, and had an update every so often, we were happy to wait for them.

Agree. If our vendor was communicative we’d happily wait but the EA has admitted he has ‘no idea’ what is going on as the vendor will not even tell him where he is looking for the onward property. For all we know, he is preparing to pull out and relist. He allegedly had a couple of offers accepted, but failed to provide any further details so the EA could not confirm when the chain was complete, and then reported the purchases had ‘fallen through’ with no additional information.

Thurlow · 31/08/2021 14:35

Our poor buyers have been waiting since early May. I wouldn’t blame them at all if they pulled out, though at the moment I don’t think they will as there’s nothing else on the market. We’ve had two purchases fall through after about 6 weeks each and there is NOTHING on the market for us at all. We’re not so desperate we’ll go into rented. It’s a shit show for us all at the moment and I hate it.

Lelliebellieboo · 31/08/2021 14:43

I think it depends on communication. We accepted our offer in February. It was only at that point that we were able to start looking properly - previous to that, we'd lost out on 3 houses because we simply weren't in a position to proceed.

In our scenario we were in the midst of lockdown, so there as literally not a single property coming onto the market AT ALL. It wasn't even that we were being picky, they simply didn't exist. When we found our property, at the end of march (7 weeks after we accepted our offer), we knew that our vendors would be in the exact same situation we were in.

I think it all boils down to how much the EA is communicating with buyers about whats going on. I didn't feel guilty keeping our buyers waiting because it literally wasn't our fault - it was on the EA to give them weekly/fornightly updates on what was happening.

blobby10 · 31/08/2021 15:38

I've moved several times with husband, 3 children, dogs, cats, guinea pigs and rabbits and each time felt really pressured to move into rented so our buyer wasn't inconvenienced. Most of the time it was OK except for one time when the buyer insisted we were out by 30 June but didn't move in for another 6 weeks! It could have saved us thousands in rent if he'd just been a bit patient but he clearly felt that 12 weeks was long enough between offer acceptance and completion.............!! That was 2011 and I know the market has changed since then.

Hungry675tf · 31/08/2021 17:10

Our buyers waited 3 weeks and we absolutely felt the pressure. We started viewing anything even vaguely appropriate rather than waiting for perfect house. We found one we loved on viewing. That vendor said they had already viewed a vacant property they wanted to offer on, so we went for it hoping it would be a short and straightforward chain.

Lolz. That was 14 weeks ago and we still haven't exchanged 🙄

nonotmenotI · 31/08/2021 17:32

We waited for 3 months but only because the owner was waiting on her new build being signed off. We had a date and worked with that. We had already sold and moved out anyway so wasn't an issue. It's our dream house so we were happy to wait.

I think if I hadn't had the date and contact between us/owner/solicitors and EAs, I would have been looking for other properties around 6-8 weeks later but that depends on the circumstances.

Clear and constant communication is needed in these types of situations.