Long chain, any advice/tips?

[LovesFood1987]

Just that really!

Anything you'd wish you had chased early on? Put falls for us to avoid? Other advice?! Thank you!

We're selling at £700k, buying a bit of a project at £740k. Offers accepted 5 weeks ago and our buyers have only just requested searches, the house we're buying hasn't even sent over the contract to our solicitor yet... Does that sound particularly slow?!

No advice but watching with interest as we’re likely to be in a chain of at least 4 or 5 if we sell!

Full mortgage offer is in the post to our solicitor (will arrive next week), all searches were requested on the 13th of December for our purchase (have chased the local authority for this as they say it's a 10 working day turn around although Christmas counts as 10 days holiday to them!), contract for the sale of ours was sent to their solicitor in the first week of December and a surveyor is lined up ready to go but we're reluctant to spent over £1000 on a surveyor when the chain has done almost nothing it seems!

We sold in May 2024 in a chain of 5 which fell through twice, its now a chain of 6. We have managed to keep hold of our onward house. We are hoping to complete in January. It can be long and v stressful but sometimes the stars align and you don't have such bad luck it's hard to tell as so much can go wrong.

Not sure if there is anything else we can do to chase things along? Any tips gratefully received! 😊

With Christmas, you can write off 2 weeks so technically you're only 3 weeks in. That doesn't seem so long to apply for searches. We were well into the process before our solicitor asked us for permission to apply for searches - draft contract, fixtures and fittings form and some enquiries had been raised before searches were done.

How long is your chain and is it complete or is the top of the chain still house hunting? I would say that you should beware of drift. If all parties in the chain are not highly motivated or you have a sluggish solicitor, weeks can start to pass with little progressing. Don't be afraid to chase, despite being made to feel like a nuisance.

We sold/bought in a chain of 5. Me and the person buying ours swapped numbers and texted each other whenever anything was done. Eg I've filled in the fixtures and fittings form. I've sent to sols. They have told me they have sent it to yours. She would be onto her sols the same day to ask about it. We got it done in 16 weeks. We both needed to move during August for the start of the School year.
It was like a full time job!

Great, thanks for the tips!

Sounds like patience and being very proactive (not depending on estate agents etc and taking matters into your own hands 😅) is the best way to go!

(Side point but I am glad Mumsnet deleted the above messages as they were unnecessarily aggressive and rude IMO!)

Is the chain complete? Some people won’t want to progress or hurry without that being the case. It would be helpful context if you shared that.

I'm not sure there's anything that makes Solicitors's go any quicker?! Each time we have moved we've found it so frustrating dealing with them! The only thing I can suggest is fill everything in and send it back in the same day otherwise a week can be gone to get one form done!