Bought a house being told it was chain free...now there is a chain...what can we do?

[alliwantforchristmasis50k]

Basically the title...

We put an offer on a house a few months ago being told that the seller was moving in with a relative and that there was no onward chain. The exchange date has been July 17th for about a month, and today we have found out that the seller is actually buying a house and now we have an onward chain to wait for! No idea how many people are involved in forward chain we only just found out this morning.

We have handed the notice in on our rental, booked time off work etc all with the assumption that the exchange would happen as planned on the 17th as there was no chain to hold anything up and we would be in by the end of July.

Not one mention of any of this by anyone from the start of the process in February!

Is this allowed? Why have we only found out there is a chain a couple of weeks before the move date everyone agreed to? Our solicitors have only just found this out as well and are saying "don't worry it should be fine"

Will it be fine?? Should we be worried??

Really you shouldn't have given notice on your rental until you had exchanged contracts. After that the sale has to go through. Your conveyancer should have made it clear nothing is guaranteed till then. House buying is a fraught and uncertain process in England, which isn't fair but it is what it is. You still have the right to pull out of the sale, unless they are prepared to exchange on the planned date.

I had a month's gap between selling and buying once and slept on my sister's living room floor for a month.

OK. I didn't read your comprehensive missive. Hence, the thinking.

yes it is allowed

will it be fine? No one can say.

You have jumped the gun by handing in rental notice before you exchanged and obtained a fixed completion date. You now face some sleepless nights until you get an exchange unless your landlord is willing to be flexible????

I once had a vendor who listed that she would be moving into rental, That vanished as soon as she received my offer and was replaced with, oh sorry, I now need to find somewhere to buy before I can move. 3 months later after pressure for a date from me she removed the property from sale and was still living there 2 years later when I looked up its history.

Was a very annoying experience - not least because another house 9 doors away that I had looked at, but put second choice, had in the meantime actually completed (vendor wanted out asap as going into a care home).

however, life is complex and "someone" was looking after me as the day my vendor withdrew her property from sale I got a much better job offer and could relocate to a different area so left my rental and bought up there instead.

This happened to us, we then had to wait for the chain to complete and in the end it broke down. Nothing you can do unfortunately.

You normally/usually agree an exchange date and that is the date that sets the move in stone, but your actual completion (get the keys) date is a week or two later. This makes it much easier to book moving vans, book a day off work, buy any furniture you need, rope in any family and friends etc.
Until the exchange happens, absolutely anything is up for grabs, so they've done nothing officially wrong. It's annoying.
You need to hound the estate agents and solicitors to understand exactly where they are at - if they've been doing this since the start, they may well be ready to exchange too and it won't be an issue at all. Don't panic till they confirm whether it will actually cause a delay.
There's not much you can do unless you want to pull out. You can ask them to rent/get an air bnb and do the transactions separately but they'll likely say no.

So annoying.
Sometimes though it's the estate agent who hasn't managed expectations properly.

When we moved last time we planned a renovation so we were holding onto our old house for a few months while the most disruptive stuff was done. Our sellers had a bit of a complicated chain as they were divorcing. One was moving into a flat they owned once tenant vacated, the other was buying a property. The agent just assumed as we didn't have a chain of our own she didn't bother consulting us.

One day I got an email from her announcing that completion date was (say) 20 October as "everyone had agreed". Phoned her up to say that no everyone was not agreed as it was the first I had heard of it! I was away for work that week and it wasn't enough time to give notice to move money out of ISAs etc. Unbelievably she tried to tell me that our vendors would not be happy about waiting longer. I said that's fine, we can't proceed then, good luck to them finding another buyer by 20 October.

She managed to get it sorted for mid November but I bet she told them it was us messing them about and it really wasn't!

You really need to read up about the house buying process or speak to family & friends because it sounds as if you don't understand what is going on.
Have you been told that exchange can still take place before 17th July. It sounds unlikely given what you said in your first post about the seller needing to wait for the rest of the chain. This is the first thing you need to clarify.

You are in a potentially vulnerable situation here, as FTBs in a falling market. Please read some of the posts here about understanding the process, negotiating, etc and act accordingly rather than behave passively and get messed around, as several people have mentioned in their comments.

I think this is a hope for the best, prepare for the worst scenario

I would suggest

• speak to your landlord about a possible extension
• speak to a removal company about the possibility of moving your belongings to storage
• research short term rentals

Don't tell the estate agent ANY of this. Make out like unless you exchange/complete on your agreed date all bets are off, as you'll presume sellers are non proceedable (even if you don't mean it). Say you'll go back to the property search.

And hopefully that'll give them a kick up the arse you need to be the squeekiest wheel.

It might not work, but at least you'll have a plan b.

We had similar when buying our house. We were told our sellers onward purchase had somewhere and it was basically just waiting for us to confirm entry date (Scotland) 2 months down the line we asked for an entry date to be told our sellers onward purchase was actually still searching and hadn’t had any offers accepted! So what we thought was a 3 way chain could have been god knows how long. We hardballed and pulled out, they asked us to come back in and promised we’d have an entry date asap, another 2 months or so passed with none so we asked them to break the chain and go into rented/family. We were moving from rented. They said no so we pulled out and immediately found somewhere else.
I checked right move recently and they didn’t actually sell there house until 10 months after first putting it on the market.
I would definitely be asking for some sort of reduction in price if there’s a massive delay.

If you have handed in your notice to your landlord Im fairly certain he can still get you to leave on thar date or he can charge you more money
I would be checking this

Not generally but it can be done. Usually exchange takes place around 10-14 days before completion. You need to check with your solicitor that it would be possible to exchange and complete on the same day.

This gives me the rage. Solicitors never give people buying for thr first time a quick trot through the process ans likely timelines and pitfalls. They’d save so much stress if they did not to mentions million of emails from their own clients.

Unfortunately this is really common. our “cash buyers” locked in the chain and then announced they’d decided to make it conditional on their house sale after all. Totally unethical.

i think you should talk to your landlord sooner rather than later to gauge your flexibility. If they are just starting the house buying process you could be waiting months to exchange. If you landlord says a min 6 month lease you can then go back and say they need to break the chain and go into rented. They may not take a moments notice but you can alt least set out your stall that they risk the chain falling down.

Keys are exchanged on completion day. Exchange can happen on the same day but is often sooner. Before exchange anyone can pull out without penalty , but not after exchange.

It is now common to exchange and complete on the same day but it doesn’t have to be so. You can both decide to complete days or even weeks after exchange but you have to agree. Unfortunately in your present situation there is nothing you can do. People lie. And house sellers and house buyers lie more than most. Believe me, it happens all the time. It is very frustrating.

We had this. Lady said she was moving in with her DD, then suddenly buying a retirement flat. Basically her DD didn't want her there, even temporarily it seems.

DH called the estate agent and basically said we have nowhere to go, made an offer on the basis it was chain free and gave a very specific end date (like 6m away), we feel you've miss-led us. Said we would struggle to afford renting somewhere and still being able to buy. Solicitors also complained and said that this was likely to now fall through. This seemed to get things sorted.

But the reality is you can't really do anything. It's either hold on or start again with a new property, neither of which help when you've no flat to live in.

I would explain to your landlord and ask for another month's stay.

Unfortunately people can do absolutely what they want until contracts are exchanged, including pulling out just before exchanging.