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.

I’m not renting, I set my stall out at the beginning of the process - it’ll cost far too much above what I pay today. I’ve chatted to solicitors and they’ve assured me they will do what they can but they have capacity restraints so cannot guarantee for end of April, they anticipate, if all being well end of May is realistic. I’ve contact other solicitors to see if they can take the case on and expedite it all.

I’ll do what I can without renting.

You are at the risk of pressing self destruct OP. You are so focused on what you think rather than reality.

Renting, be it an air bnb a holiday let a over pub room, for a week/month has so many advantages. You can pack in your own time, get everything into storage, clean your home and hand over the keys. You get your new keys, you can clean and plan before your belongs arrive. Not doing everything on the same day. There are so many advantages, much less stress and will ensure your sale actually happens.
BTW your solicitor is working for you: you tell them this needs to happen by the end of the month, their lack of capacity is not your problem.

I am with OP I wouldn't rent either. She was clear with the buyer from the beginning that they couldn't move until they found somewhere and that it would take time. I don't think renting would be less stressful either. What if the the sale of the house she is buying falls through and she has to rent for a lot longer than a month ? She might end up having to find another rental
If the buyers can't wait for another few weeks I would question whether they want the house, Perhaps they have found something they prefer and what a way out?

Sounds like everyone has been dragging their feet
Your buyer offers early November but doesn't get a survey done till mid March. That’s 4 1/2 months!
Or were they waiting for you to get an offer accepted on your onward move ?

You had an offer accepted mid/late Jan so theoretically could complete in June
but
I wouldn’t put any guarantees in writing. There's nothing stopping your sellers pulling out

Really this request and any deadlines set by the buyer are for your solicitor to negotiate. They are the ones doing all the work and it’s entirely up to them whether they can meet the deadline

Its also not on you to offer financial compensation because again you can’t dictate or have any knowledge of what may or may not come up.

Don’t take risks OP. Leave it to your solicitor to have these discussions with theirs.

If your solicitor advices the June deadline isn’t feasible then seriously concider renting and storing your things. This will have a cost to you though but just as I’m guessing your buyer wouldnt pay your additional costs you shouldn’t have to pay theirs
Whether you or they do or not depends on how desperate each of you is to move

Totally disagree. I never move on the same day. I always (7 moves) complete on the sale and purchase a week to a month apart. It takes the pressure of the chain.It is far less stressful and gives time to clean and sort in a calm and controlled way. Well worth the storage costs.
Also re time frames, I disagree with you there too. The buyer gave time for OP to find and have an offer accepted, it's what's happened since that's causing the issue. I put an ultimatum on my last purchase when the seller was faffing, I gave a very realistic and achievable time frame for completion and if it went over my offer was £5k less per week.

fuck that. What a hassle.

The opposite, much easier.

If they’ve only exchanged on the sale.

Their purchase is slowing things down

Agreed.

Easier to have to find somewhere to rent and then had to pack up and move twice? We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

When I moved a couple of years ago there’s no way I would have agreed to renting. Aside from the hassle of having to move twice, there was only one house on the market that suited my needs. If that purchase had fallen through I would have pulled out of the sale and stayed where I was. No way was I giving up my family home, with a risk that my purchase could fall through and there be nothing else suitable on the market

honestly, this this and this. I’m not giving up my home and risking renting and paying double due to rates. No thanks

If only you'd made that clear before, OP. Perhaps then numerous posters wouldn't have suggested that you, or even ordered you to, sell then rent 😉

You just need to decide whether you want to sell or not. We moved in with family for 2 months rather than lose our buyer. They needed to be in before they had their baby, and we had lost our first purchase.

If you don't want to move in to rented, then you have to tell them that you can't meet their date and suffer any consequences.

Tbf on OP she said it quite a while ago

Yes, exactly. It's the same posters banging on and on insisting they're right rather than listening to what the OP is saying

Is that a joke, she said this right from the off!!!

I take it back, its a joke!!!

Not one of my better ones, clearly.

We bought and sold and everything was done in 8 weeks, including a bit of a back & forth over a funny boundary title.
Your solicitors sound shocking & I’d be tempted to say to them that unless you are exchanged by mid-May at the absolute latest, you will change solicitors! They are capable of chasing & putting rockets up backsides, but they just don’t.
We had the number of our seller which was invaluable by the way - we could message saying we had sent back xyz to their solicitor & they would immediately contact their solicitor to chase the next steps. Without this, things would’ve sat in peoples in trays for weeks most likely.
Get hassling, make a nuisance of yourself & make them work for the money you are paying them, things can be sped up, but you need to make it happen!

Done that this week, given a very clear timeline when I expect things to happen - if they don’t do by end of the coming week I’ll be going with another solicitor. There was some back and forth with our purchase over missing titles and some queries but I still expected things to be happening rather than nothing. We can’t do that with our purchase unfortunately as the owner is old and not in the greatest of health. I’ll go to our buyer via EA.

16-20 weeks is the average now
Fraud checks have extended it all

Suggest asking solicitor to do them earlier in the process. Our last sale the solicitors left it till everything else was sorted and this resulted in ridiculous delays

This is all very tardy. We have moved several times, admittedly without a mortgage on our side, and it has all been done and dusted in 8 weeks maximum. The last two sales and purchases were 6 weeks, including surveys and searches.

We used a solicitor who wasn't on the lists of mortgage companies, plus he was very pro-active. He rang us about something in the survey at 10.30 on a Saturday morning. It was an issue which we hadn't picked up but was sorted on Monday morning.

This was in September 2021 when the Stamp Duty was being increased on 1 October and accordingly a very busy time.

I would just like to add: We have NEVER had to chase our very good solicitor. Therefore, we have always used the same one (named person) in the same company. He has always phoned us to update progress and immediately if a problem has arisen (rarely).