Chain has broken

[justasmalltownmum]

Anyone been in a similar situation before/ what to do:

We saw a house that was perfect for us, (we have some specific needs). There were no other offers and the sellers wanted a quick sale, so we accepted their counter offer of under asking price.

Whilst that was going on - we put ours up and accepted the first offer (just under asking), so that we could crack on.

Great - we pay for the searches and now estate agent has come back and said they have had an offer for asking so they want to proceed with that. We countered at above asking, and agent has said the other buyers have gone above and beyond our counter so we have now lost out.

My dilemma is - what do I do about the offer we have on ours? Our estate agent says to just start looking again. But we have such specific criteria that this one took ages to find in the first place.

1. would you keep looking and keep your buyer on the back burner
2. tell them your chain has broken and risk they also then retract
3. something else?

thanks

You tell your buyers that you've lost your purchase and ask them to give you some time to find another house and hope they agree. Then you try and find something else.

if they dont agree to wait and pull out you need to start again.

or you sell and move into rented which i understand will be difficult if you have some specific needs.

unfortunately this is why buying and selling can be so difficult.

Would you consider moving into rented accommodation temporarily? How specific are your requirements?

I’d continue and move into rented. That will put you in a strong buying position. And you never know, the one you wanted may fall through.

You have to be honest with your buyer.

Either you start researching potential rentals you could move into to definitely keep hold of your buyer or (if that's impossible) you tell them anyway and hope they don't pull out.

If they do pull out, at least it gives you plenty of time to find another property that is well suited to your needs so you can start the whole process again and hope for better luck next time!

We had this with our first house. The people we were buying from lost the house they were hoping to buy.
We were relocating from a rental property and didn't need to be in the house for another 6 months. We agreed to pause our activity towards buying their house whilst they looked for another. About 6 weeks later they found a new one and restarted our searches and whatnot.

With our next house move we put ours up for sale having not found a house and the agent filtered out anyone needing a quick sale. Once we had found a house they then started the purchase process, we moved 6 months after we accepted the offer. Just be upfront about the situation and hope you are able to keep your buyers or find buyers that are in a position to wait

Renting is not an option.
just doesn’t make sense when we have an acceptable home that we own.
It took about 18 months for us to find the new one. Which is then when we put ours on to the market.

just really deflated with it all. As in hindsight, I think our offer was accepted as it was priced a bit low as they wanted a fast sale and ours was the only offer. (Until it wasn’t). The likely hood of that happening again is also low.

I would be honest with your estate agent and buyer about what's happened. Your buyer might be in a rush and move on to something different, or they might love your place and believe they've got a deal on it they won't get elsewhere so be prepared to wait it out. You won't know until you discuss it openly.

Moving into rented is the worst option im surprised it has been suggested a few times. If you after a Unicorn house there is no point selling your place to then waste more money on rent waiting for a house that may never come to market.

Surely the logical thing is to inform your buyer and continue your house hunt. If you find nothing and your buyer eventually pulls out you have not lost anything.

It's a really frustrating situation but, sadly, is legal in England.
Given that you don't want to rent and are so specific in your requirements/wishes that it took you 18 months to find a house this time, you definitely need to tell the agents and buyers this and probably pull out until you find another place that suits you. The buyers are unlikely to want to wait for 1-2 years.

Tell your buyer you've lost your house. They can then start looking for somewhere else. There is no sense for them to pull out with nowhere else to buy, so if you are lucky you will find somewhere else before they do, and then they will still be happy to proceed. If they find somewhere else they love before you do, you'll have to find another buyer but your refusal to consider renting shows you are ok to take that risk.

If it took you 18 months to find something else you need to tell your buyers and either move into rented or be more honest to yourselves about your criteria. Do you actually want to move? And are you looking for a unicorn?

You could not tell your buyer if you thought you were going to drag it out for 3 or 4 weeks. But realistically you are going to be trying to drag this out for 12 or 16 weeks minimum.

I don’t really “get” this, as I have only ever viewed and offered on houses once we had already found a buyer and were in a proceedable position. I thought most estate agents wouldn’t entertain an offer unless the buyer had also sold theirs.

That being said, it was really shady behaviour of your onward purchase to keep the house on the market and keep taking viewings. If you immediately provided the agent your memorandum of sale, ID documents etc, then their estate agents should have moved to Under Offer subject to contracts, and taken it off the market.

For future reference, when you make your best and final offer on a property, you can tell the agent that it’s on the understanding they take the property off the market.

They may well have been round to see it before the OP or before the OP put in the offer and just taken their time a bit more before making their offer.

We did!
it was accepted, solicitors notified, sales memorandum given etc
EA kept repeating they won’t mark it as sold until the mortgage is finalised…. And the lo and behold.. the day we are outbid they marked it as sold.