How long til your sellers found somewhere?

[purplecolouroffunk]

Hi!

We're first-time buyers in Scotland and a couple of weeks ago we had an offer accepted on a house we fell in love with! The only issue is that our sellers haven't found anywhere to buy yet.

Has anyone been in this position and if so how long did it take for your sellers to find somewhere?

How did you keep in contact with the sellers during their search? At the moment our solicitor is staying in contact with their solicitor, but I hate that we're so far removed from getting updates.

Our solicitor has said there really won't be any updates until they find somewhere, but I'd quite like to be kept up to date with if they're viewing places / putting in offers etc. Does that seem unreasonable / not normal?

We don't have an entry date yet and we want to set something that is reasonable and flexible for them, but also don't want it to drag on forever.

To make things even more complicated, I'm newly pregnant and due beginning of March, so we'd really like to be in before the end of the year to that I can start to nest a bit 😊

We also have our mortgage approved already. Quick turnaround!

Any advice appreciated!

We’re on the other side of the equation and have just sold our house to FTB a week ago without having anywhere to go. Round here you can’t view a house without yours being under offer, which is fair enough. We’ve got 6 viewings booked this weekend but the market is very slow and none of them are perfect so it may be that we have to wait and see what comes on. I’d be happy to share that we’ve got viewings booked in but wouldn’t want to be giving regular updates about when they are and any offers etc, I think that’s probably a bit much. If we don’t find anywhere within about two months I’ll start to get worried I think.

We accepted an offer on our house in January, had an offer accepted on the house we are buying in March and the chain was complete by May. Hoping for a completion date next month!

Thanks for your replies!

Good to hear the other side of things. I’d definitely be happy with just knowing they have viewings booked. I’m so anxious they’re not going to find anywhere and will end up pulling out. The uncertainty is so scary.

@AliceinSlumberland how have you gone about setting an entry date?

I know your circumstances may be really different, but if you got to the point where you really couldn’t find anything, would you consider dropping out of the sale? Or would you look to extend the entry date with your buyer?

I’ve had a complete nightmare with vendors. One kept me waiting for 20 months! Before he pulled out after we had spent thousands on surveys etc. we hung on because he strung us along with promises and we loved the house. Others have taken 8+ months then realised they couldn’t legally sell etc. all a duxking waste of time and it’s been 4 years, we’ve lost 5 houses, house prices have actually doubled here in that time and we haven’t moved. It’s been a disaster.

Sorry to say house sales can fall through after a while for a host of reasons, that's the trouble with chains. I think it would be unreasonable to pester them for updates and could even scare them away and change their minds.

@Wentie my god I’m so sorry to hear that, what a nightmare for you. I really hope something works out for you soon.

@Ioverslept oh yes we definitely wouldn’t want to pester them. The last thing we want to do is scare them away and we did agree to be flexible (within reason). I’m thinking asking for an update every couple of weeks or something hopefully seems reasonable.

No we haven’t set a date, we personally wouldn’t drop out but we wouldn’t go into rented to make the sale go through so I guess it would depend how long our buyer would wait 🤷 I’m hoping it won’t come to that!!

@AliceinSlumberland thanks! Hoping it doesn’t come to that too. We’d never ask for them to move into rented especially as they have two young kids.

Before we truly were flexible, but now that I’m pregnant we suddenly have this deadline as we don’t want to have to move with a newborn or when I’m about to pop.

I guess I’ll have to tell them I’m pregnant eventually which might help support our case, but equally don’t want to scare them off if we feel like hassle. Argh, minefield!