How long would you wait for vendor to find a house?

[nannypaywoes]

Offer accepted about 4 weeks ago and vendor still hasn't found somewhere to buy.. they are actually on holiday now for 3 weeks so I guess won't find anywhere for another month or so. How long is reasonable to wait before giving up and looking elsewhere?

I wouldn’t. I would expect them to move into rented if they weren’t ready to proceed with their onward sale.
Pick a date when you want to exchange by. If they can’t do that, look for something else.

A couple of months? It’s unrealistic to think everyone will all find houses and have offers accepted simultaneously, and it is the summer.

If you can’t wait, however, apologise and look for somewhere else,

In the current climate, a long time. There's a real shortage of larger 3 and 4 bed houses around here. The good ones sell immediately and growing families can take a year or more to move and some have seen prices, rocket out of their reach while they've been trying.

Also interested in this question as I am the vendor who hasn’t yet found somewhere!

We were the vendor in this situation and it took us 2 months to find somewhere. We were upfront about our position from the off and moving into a rental would not have been an option but would have understood if the buyers had decided to look for something else. Fortunately they had been searching for a nearly a year so were happy to be patient.
Nothing to stop you looking for something else whilst they continue their search you have to look out for yourself and at this stage pulling out would not be unreasonable if you found something else

3 months max then either they agree to move into rented or you withdraw

They’ve very unlikely to find anything in August the market alsways stops for Sjmmer. Should pick up in Autumn.

Ours waited 9 months for us, that time included a house sale falling through. They had already sold and were staying with family though so weren't in a massive rush, so we were lucky!

We are selling our house and so I'm more worried about our buyers getting fed up waiting for us!
We are prepared to move into rentals if needs be but it's impossible to find anything that is less than 12 months rental which obviously no vendor is going to wait around for..
the vendor has an early repayment charge on their mortgage so don't want to move into rentals..

@nannypaywoes My friends moved into holiday rental when they needed to. You need to negotiate a long term holiday let rather than a 12 month residential rental.

We have been waiting month and half for vendor to find a house but nothing yet, our main concern as we are FTB is that if they don't find somewhere within 6 months time we would have to pull out because of rising interest rates. If it gets to 3 months since we put the offer in we will have to ask if they will move into rented or we will have to walk away.

I am a vendor struggling to find somewhere to move to - houses are selling before I've had a viewing or I'm getting outbid. I have considered renting but haven't seen anywhere that does short term and takes pets 😔It is so frustrating.

@nannypaywoes We had 3 children, 2 dogs, 2 cats and a legion of rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters so struggled to find short term rentals (shortest was 6 weeks, longest 9 months) in between house sale and purchase on 4 occasions! Twice we were lucky enough to move in with relatives, another time we lived in a very small 2 bed bungalow owned by my BiL father (ironically we bonded more as a family in those 3 months than in a big house!) and another time we found a house through my dads church that was going to be empty for up to a year so they were happy for us to live there until the new incumbent was ready.

I am a vendor in this situation, long and short of it while my house sold last august it has been a long drawn out process and if anything the "stress of purchasing a home" is just that! We have a little boy and given the current situation with cost of living crisis this also plays a part into purchasing a house. We pulled out from our sale last year due to a family bereavement and put our house back on the market in February. It sold again within a few days, found a property we liked a couple of weeks later. When survey valuations came back the house was covered in damp which meant a large undervalue for the lender, the vendor would not negotiate with us on this so we had to pull out. Same thing happened again on a second home we found with a 17k undervalue to market price. We lost our buyers as they had waited 12 weeks which was understandable and we did feel our hand was being forced as with the cost of living there is no way we could afford rented plus additional costs for home buying. We've finally got another buyer who had their offer accepted last month, we found a house and it's well underway, we are needing to wait a while longer as it is a bereaved property so probate is required however I think the best thing to do in these situations is to be upfront about yours and their circumstances so you can work together.
Are you in a position where you have to move asap?
In an ideal world we'd find houses and move within a few weeks but I guess we have to be reasonable and thoughtful that other people have their own situations too.
I wouldn't give up just yet, my estate agents told me 12 weeks to find somewhere is the norm and I completely agree with that.
Good luck with everything! 🤞🏼

Thank you all - I think we will hold tight for another month or so before making any decisions. No particular reason to move quickly as such just that our buyer offered us 75k over asking so ideally I wouldn't want to lose her!

We can't find a rental anywhere for less than 6 months - it's impossible. And so many places where we wanted to go see them, the agent calls up to say they've been let. It's quite a small market for family home rentals so I guess it makes sense that things get snapped up quickly!

My friend has taken about 3 months to buy, she kept getting out done buy cash buyers. She finally found somewhere last week and had an offer accepted. Her buyers were threatning to pull out but she was trying her best!!

In general, I'd agree, but they haven't found anything to even start buying after a month and aren't even going to be looking for another 3 weeks. That's not good.