Fairly clueless second time buyer

[RoomToDream]

Buying our second home and feel very green as I've never sold and bought a property in a chain. I have an understanding of equity (sold price minus what is left on the mortgage), and need to consider fees, stamp duty etc. but feel a little lost around the details of hows deposits work this time round.

We put our house up for sale on Monday, viewers yesterday and first offer this morning with the asking price - hurray! They are first time buyers and their deposit is a little less than 10 percent but mortgage in principle sorted.

How does their deposit factor into our next house purchase? In my mind, I have the equity of our house as the deposit for the next one and all fees and stamp duty can be paid for with savings separately.

So does the low deposit from our buyers make any difference? Is it just security? I don't think they would want to lose tens of thousands of pounds, so I feel comfortable they won't drop out after the deposit stage.

Am I missing anything? Estate agent is checking on other viewers to see if there are more offers so I want to have an idea of how important the deposit side is. Say someone else offered the same amount but with a bigger deposit will this help our future purchase in the long run?

Thanks for help and sorry if this seems really obvious. Our families don't own property so we don't have lots of experience to draw from.

Normally when a chain is involved the first time buyers deposit is sent up the chain from one solicitor to the next rather than each buyer putting down a deposit so you dont actually need to provide a deposit of your own.

As @bilbodog said. The deposit is held at the point of exchange so your buyers deposit will technically become yours “virtually”. If your house purchase is significantly higher value then you may be asked to top it up to around the 10%mark

Ah okay, so the only advantage of being offered a higher deposit by a buyer is that it will reduce the amount we need to top up for the deposit on the higher value house we'll be buying?

correct

Ive never been asked to ‘top up’ the deposit when moving house.

When we moved there was no deposit on exchange like when you are a first time buyer. Your funds move on completion up the chain. So you don't need a deposit in the same way.