Buying a house that has already been part exchanged for a new build

[DecisionTime123]

Has anyone ever done this? So Mrs A has sold her house to Company B who have in turn sold her a new build, and I am now buying Mrs A's house direct from Company B (although she's still living it in which seems odd?)

I'm being told the new build is ready. They've asked me to aim to exchange in 6 weeks which is fine in fact I'd like to complete in 6 weeks, I'm all for a sprint to the finish line, but what should I be suspect or wary of? All sounds too easy ...

I'm also now thinking if the new build is really ready, and if Mrs A no longer owns her house, why is she still living in it? Surely her move to new build home isn't reliant on my exchange/completion?

Mrs A will have agreed to part exchange her house but won’t have completed the sale yet. She will have exchanged contracts with the builder but won’t complete the sale until the day she gets the key for the new build and physically moves in.

in the meantime the builder will market the property that they have taken in part-exchange hoping to get a sale that takes place when Mrs A moves into the new build, the builder does not want to hold on to the part exchanged property for a minute longer than they have to.

As a result of the builder not wanting to hold on to part-ex property anyone buying it can usually negotiate a really good price, especially as the builder will have paid less than market value due to the savings in estate agents fees for Mrs A.

There is no problem buying it, you may even get a real bargain.

This

see now I am more suspicious than that. If I exchange blind in 6 weeks, with no firm indication of the completion date, the builder can then say oh sorry, it's going to take another 6 months or whatever.

What I thought was a "no chain" quick sale is in fact entirely open ended. Or am I overthinking it?

Your first paragraph is exactly right. It will be ‘completion on notice’; meaning you will exchange (I.e commit to buying) without knowing exactly when you will move in. You will also hold the risk on the house from exchange.

It’s promising that the house is ready - but if that’s true, they should be able to firm a completion date. I’d be asking if that’s possible.

I’d say it’s far better than being a chain with goodness knows how many others, a friend of mine took 9 months to complete a house sale due to a chain. This would probably be a lot less stressful.

as I said builders especially the bigger ones will have a date in mind and rarely stray far from it.

We sold our house through a part exchange scheme with a house builder around 15 years ago and it was so easy and stress free.

The house we were buying was ready for us to move into on completion. As soon as we reserved the new build, the company arranged for estate agents to market our house and it sold SSTC after two days. It didn’t actually belong to the builders though until we’d completed on the sale and purchase and I believe the ongoing purchase/sale between the new owners and the building company completed around six weeks later.

Just to give you an idea of the timeline and how quickly things moved for us on the whole part exchange side of it
Reservation signed 23/12
Mortgage application made over Xmas holiday
Solicitor appointed 04/01
Mortgage approved 16/01
Completion 28/01
Zoopla then tells me that a further completion, between the builders and new owners, then took place in March.

Building companies don’t hang around. We bought another new build last Autumn, selling our previous new build to a chain free cash buyer, and we completed in 43 days.

I thought you couldn't exchange without a confirmed completion date?

It is common for new builds to exchange with ‘completion on notice’. As this is a part exchange, the house builder will want both the buyer of the new build and the buyer of this house to exchange on the same terms.