How long to wait for onward purchase?

[TommyJones]

Hi,

We had an offer accepted 2 months ago. So far all we get from the vendors that the market is slow with few properties and so they cant find what they want. Given how compettitive it is to even get a property, if you are actually offering, we wonder whether to give up? Is it normal right now to wait this long? Potentially it could be a year if everyone in the chain takes 2 months! We suspect they may want something very specific and have very slim chances to find it, in which case were never really proceedable (originally we were told they needed to move and to wait at most a month!)

Everything I’ve seen and heard says an alarmingly high percentage of chain transactions will never complete. Over 50% if I had to guess. Published stats on this are woefully out of date and alignment with the current market!

We sold in February after horrendous issues with land registry. Thankfully our buyers waited for us. We were going to rent when the perfect property came up and the seller agreed to us rented big until our purchase could complete. However we were prepared to go into a cheap shared house if necessary. I definitely wouldn't incur fees unless a seller was able to move quickly. It's unfair of them to expect buyers to hang around indefinitely.

I would dispute that. The current market where we are is not that bad (and they are staying local)....we were one of six viewers and they only had 2 offers. Other houses we viewed typiclly had 5-7 viewers too and not always even an offer. Whilst where I sold I had 45 viewers....

They don’t sound that serious about moving if they haven’t even found something to offer on in this time.

We are still yet to have an offer accepted, we’re up to our 9th now and we’re offering 10-15% over when it comes to best and finals. It is brutal out there! Our buyer is getting understandably nervous but we’re doing all we can.

Exactly. If they were losing out I would have more patience....but not even offering....

Our buyers, buyers (chain free / FTBs) pulled out yesterday. Don’t know why. They were concerned about their mortgage deal expiring mid-July, but we were about to sign a rental contract today to enable completion for the date they needed. Thankfully we found out in time before committing!

We’ve told our buyers we’ll wait for them. hopefully they’ll sell quickly and for more money as their buyers haggled them down massively from initial agreed offer.

Looking at a chain free house today, which is well below what we’ve sold for, so hopefully we can compete with others and at least close the chain at the top!

Our buyers waited over 3 months for us, but we were clear when we accepted their offer that we were looking for something specific and that if we couldn’t find it we wouldn’t proceed as we didn’t need to move. They were in rented though and were happy to risk it, as the house we were selling was also a rare find and they really wanted it. It benefited them as we could have sold for more money by the time we moved as prices had continued to rise. But everyone was honest from the start. It also meant they didn’t spend any money on surveys etc until we had an offer accepted.

We accepted their offer early Dec and didn’t see our purchase until Feb. In that time we hadn’t viewed anything else at all. Fortunately it all came together in the end!

Just to add, we were serious about moving but wanted a particular village where houses are rarely for sale. We needed to be proceedable to stand any chance of buying there. Just because someone isn’t viewing doesn’t mean they aren’t serious-we just had to sit it out and see if anything came to market. We were on the phone to agents all the time but there wasn’t actually anything to view. In the end though the chain was only 2 houses and 3 parties so it all skipped along and we completed inside 15 weeks, which wasn’t bad with the current backlogs on searches etc

Update: They finally found a house they wanted to buy, which was a new build....and promptly lost out to another buyer :(

Think we are going to look at other houses and if we find something proceedable we like then we will pull the plug on these people.