Buyer wants end-of-month completion and may pull out of chain if it’s not met

[Housemover26]

We Accepted an offer early Nov, told EA at the time we haven’t found anywhere and wouldn’t break the chain (two young children) so need somebody to be patience whilst we wait and Confirmed all ok as the buyer was breaking chain themselves and living with family.
Mid / Late Jan - our offer was accepted - Found out our buyer not a cash buyer but small mortgage and runs out end of May
Feb - Lots of chasing our solicitor
Mid March - Our buyer had survey done
Late March - finally received preliminary report and initiate local searches (mortgage already approved) delay due to solicitors and some historic title issues to resolve / understand
NOW - our buyer wants to complete by the end of the month and if we can’t agree then will pull out though still receiving enquiries. The rationale is they’ve booked to be out of country which is news to us.

Totally shocked and surprised and quite frankly annoyed. Yes we didn’t find anywhere for 10 weeks but had offered on 3 properties and lost in bidding war on 2, 1 we had to reconsider due to commute time and we were over a quiet period with little properties hitting the market. Only reason why we’ve had an offer accepted now is a promotion and significant pay rise allowing us to increase budget. I get it’s frustrating but we’ll complete by end of May all being well.

Theres nothing I can do, our solicitor has confirmed unlikely to get searches back and won’t allow time for enquiries so breaking the chain isn’t actually an option as we risk having no house at all should the searches find anything significant.

"rented are generally 12 months"

No, they're very much not. Read my post again, or google 'renters rights bill.'

Ignore EA adverts that say '6 months' etc. I don't think Rightmove have given them the ability to say 'no lease term' yet.

Well then this is going to fall over. If everything is on your terms and even after the comments here you can't see that then I expect your poor buyers are totally fed up with your attitude and it's no surprise they have lost tolerance. You need to be offering something to them if you really want this to happen - how about each week it goes beyond the end of the month you reduce the price by £?K depending on the value of the transaction.

BTW renting IS an option, it's just not one you want.

What are private searches? Solicitor has said nothing can be done - I asked about paying for them to fast tracked?

Well, you've left yourself no options really. You either move out (very common) or you let it fall through. I wouldn't want to wait any longer either. Most people don't mean they're happy to wait indefinitely when they say they'll give time, and most people don't expect it either.

Agreed, we offered 30 September last year and completed 12th December. We had searches outstanding but bought indemnies to cover ourselves. It's not hard to do it in under 60 days

'at the time of accepting the offer we made it clear via the EA, we hadn’t found a place but actively looking and needed time to find the property. We were assured the buyer was happy with that and kept checking in via EA.'

OP - this is not the problem. The problem is from when you had your offer accepted and what has / has not happened since.

At the end of the day you were upfront and honest about not having found anywhere and not moving out before. The choice to proceed was theirs entirely - they took the risk. Not your fault it took 10 weeks to find a house that is the way it goes. Conveyancing can be longwinded and for everyone that says searchs come back quickly there are many councils that take weeks.

Stick to your guns - I am in a chain and will not be moving out sooner than completion, if folk want to pull out that is their loss. It took me 48 hrs to sell a few weeks ago so no problem finding a new buyer.

I'm selling my parents' house.
My original buyer pulled out mid December and I'm (hopefully!) going to be ready to close sale with a new buyer mid April.
That means 4 months from re-releasing to the market to closing sale. All open market neither buyer known to me or anything.

You've already been 6 months and still don't know whether you can complete in a month. That would be 7 months! I could understand if in that time you'd found loads of places that had fallen through days before sale, but it sounds like you've only found and are still buying one property. Maybe rather than being annoyed at your poor buyers, get your own skates on a frankly stop taking the piss.

Of course you won't move out before completion, why would you? The buyers are wanting to get to completion, it is that that the OP wants to drag out until they're caught up.

OP is not 'dragging' anything out it is the conveyancing process that is taking time, frustrating for her buyer but tough shit.

And how do you suggest OP 'gets a move on'

??

Pushing hard to keep the buyer with either a compensation offer or an agreement to move in to rental for a short period. Its not rocket science, if they want to keep the deal alive they have options. Just not options they like.

Understood all, I can see their point of view, we’ve had poor advice from solicitor and still appears that way. I’ll phone the council tomorrow to see if we can push for the searches to be done - website shows we may be able to pay an extra fee though was told it’s not an option. I’ll pay extra to complete ASAP but won’t be moving out and risking being left in a rented property for ages, that was clear from the outset.

The local average for completion is 16-20 weeks according to our EA so from our offer being accepted we’re working towards that. Our EA have apparently said that their solicitor is still raising enquiries to ours that need working through.

If we loose it, we loose it, doesn’t make the process less frustrating though for all involved including poor solicitors despite good reviews from online and verbal recommendations

I wouldnt be moving out prior and if I Iost the sale so be it and referring up thread only an idiot leaves searches undone and buys an indemnity (which arent worth the paper they're written on)

Our sellers are a young family moving into a rental - I'd get things moving if I were you.

Wish you luck op. Hope you can get it over the line. I imagine your pretty stressed. Our system stinks in reality.

Recently purchased a property - complicated as it’s a flat and there are significant conveyancing issues arising from new legislation around fire safety/cladding however - and despite closing for christmas/new year and our solicitor have a bad bout of flu, we went from appointing them to completion in 13 weeks.

You or your solicitor need to get your act together and do your utmost to get this done by the end of the month, really, as it’s understandable that your buyer is fed up now.

Surely they can complete when out of the country if they grant somebody a financial power of attorney to sign on their behalf?

Of course they can complete if they aren’t in the country. They are living with family.

We rented and completed on our house purchase whilst we were abroad. Nothing particular happens that requires the buyers attendance unless they actually have to move that day.

Standard pushing response. My last house move took 10m to complete (5 people in chain) but I kept getting emails stating our buyers would pull out if xyz

You aren’t listening to people who are telling you that letting rules are changing

Just because they are out of the country doesn't mean that they cannot complete. They could give a family/friend/lawyer a Power of Attorney to execute the deeds on thier behalf.

We signed ours and left them with our solicitor to hand over. They won’t even need POA

I assume that the OP means that until you exchange there is no guarantee that your purchase will happen, leaving you stuck in rented if it falls through for some reason. We refused to break the chain in a similar situation for this reason.

Which means you don’t sign the rental agreement until you exchange. Its absolutely manageable