Do you think seller will pull out?

[skyfly]

we had our offer accepted in early Feb, with intention to complete sometime in June. We have our mortgage approved, but seller has not yet sent any forms to solicitors so no searches or enquiries could be raised and there is little update from EA. The last thing we heard this week is that seller has not yet found the onward house. Shall we start looking for another property?

Do you have a property to sell?
I'd continue looking in the meantime as they may not finding anything suitable to purchase themselves so no point not viewing others and potentially missing out on more proactive sellers.

The Seller will probably not start spending any money on their sale until they have found somewhere to buy.

I think seeing as you offered in early February and they appear to have made no progress, yes I would be looking at other houses now. They can’t expect you to wait forever and certainly in my area, I’ve noticed more properties coming to market in the last week or so & you don’t want to miss out on other potentially suitable properties. It’s a buyers market so they should be mindful of that. I would also be telling the EA that I’m going to start looking at other houses for sale soon as they appear to have made zero progress.

Continue looking, and keep this on the back burner. I fear you may find this a common issue ATM due to the lack.of property on the market.

No, we sold already and need to move out by July, hence the pressure

Hi OP,

Yes I think there's every chance that if you put pressure on the vendor to meet your deadline, they'll pull out.

As I see it, you have 3 options:

• Sell yours as planned, and move into rented in July, hoping that you can get into vendor's place soon after.
• Tell your buyers now that your vendors are still looking for their onward purchase which makes July unlikely, and see if they are able to wait.
• Carry on as you are and expect the wheels to fall off this chain at some point - kick the can down the road.

At the end of the day which one you choose depends on how much you love their house. If it's a dream once-in-a-lifetime house then you'll move into rented and break the chain to keep them onside...

If it's only "meh" then you will make a different choice, I guess?

Best of luck.

Why do you need to move out? Your own buyer will need to wait, or have you exchanged contracts without a property to move to?

I wouldn’t pull out but would continue to view other properties, especially if they don’t have an upward chain. If I found one I liked better that I thought would move quicker at that point I would put ultimatum to current seller. In the meantime there’s little point in pulling out completely as they might find a purchase next week.

Did you know there was a chain or was one even mentioned? I would tell the EA you need to be in by June (provided all checked and searches are ok) and ask can the buyer work to this time frame yes or no? If not you will have to look at other options

It was mentioned at the time we put an offer but the EA assured us that the vendor has already put an offer on the onward property. Once the offer was accepted and our solicitor started to engage re searches, it transpired that they just started looking. They have not submitted any forms to the solicitors to date and the EA just said that they are still looking. So apart from the offer and mortgage valuation completed back in February, we are not moving forward. We feel it could take far too long if they ever decide to proceed with the sale.

To be close to the school where our DC are going in September. We sold investment property and moving out of the rental accommodation that is also sold already

If you don’t feel like any progress is being made I’d definitely lol at other options. We put an offer on a house fairly recently but the seller was unsure because it was £5,000 less than asking so they said they’d leave it on the table and let us know, we told EA we were in a rush so can’t wait around to long. We decided to carry on looking and it’s a good job we did because it was a month before the EA called us but by that time we’d found somewhere else

Yes, start looking at other properties and instruct your solicitor to stop work so you don't waste any further money in the event that this all falls through, as seems quite likely.
They may just not have found anything they liked which is fair enough but they don't sound very serious or considerate people and could well pull out. You also say that you were lied to when you put the offer in. It's unclear whether this dishonesty came from the agents or the sellers but neither is an encouraging sign.
Definitely start looking elsewhere straight away especially as you have a tight timeframe.