House buyers dragging their feet again. Is this normal now, or are we just unlucky?

[tverds]

Just a bit of a moan really, although I'd welcome some advice from anyone who's been through this recently!
We're now on our second attempt at selling our house. Our first buyers strung us along for three months before eventually pulling out, causing us to lose our onward purchase.
We put the house back on the market, priced it to sell and received multiple offers within three days. We deliberately chose the buyers who seemed to be in the most straightforward position. They're selling their house to a cash buyer, so we thought we'd have a relatively simple chain.

Fast-forward 10 days since accepting their offer and it's pretty much radio silence again. Our solicitors have already issued the draft contract pack, but the buyers haven't even booked a survey. The estate agents have sent them surveyor recommendations, but apparently nothing has happened.
Meanwhile, we've found another house, had our offer accepted and are desperate to get moving. We're currently doing an exhausting daily school run because our children have already started at their new school, so we're really keen to get this move completed.
I appreciate it's only been 10 days, and perhaps I'm being impatient after our previous experience, but I'm absolutely dreading another three months of being messed around, only for the whole thing to collapse again.
Is this just how house buying works these days? Are we being unreasonable expecting buyers to have booked a survey by now? Would you be chasing at this stage, or just leaving them to it?
I'm finding the complete lack of control over the whole process incredibly frustrating!

Gosh ten days is nothing. My buyers faffed about for months. It’s so stressful, I know. I hope you hear something soon and things get moving.

We put our house on the market in may and accepted an offer two weeks later. Good, committed buyers who we were assured had a cash buyer offered on their property. Happy days.

Us and our buyers have been ready to exchange since mid August, the bottom ‘cash’ buyer has dragged his feet.

Eventually got him to agree to a completion date on next Monday 28th. All week last week we couldn’t get agreement to exchange. At the 11th hour at 4pm on Friday we are told that this ‘cash’ buyer is actually awaiting the funds from a remortgage and also another mortgage to make up the purchase amount.

So we’ve been lied to since day one. We have absolutely no idea whether he is able to purchase, we got the news and then the solicitor closed for the weekend. So we’ve are in limbo. Removals were booked for Monday, we are pretty much all packed. We are buying from a developer who has said that we need to complete Monday or we lose the new build.

So, don’t believe a word you have been told about your buyer, it’s often a pack of lies.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. The house moving process in this country just doesn't work. There seems to be no consideration of what other families are being put through. Yes, I've been shocked at the number of times throughout this process I've found estate agents have outright lied to me. Perhaps I'm particularly naive...

Thank you. I realise 10 days isn't very long. I think it's just as we were messed around previously I'm looking for problems already!

10 days! Give them a chance! They might be on holiday or have other things more pressing than booking a survey. Also a straightforward sale doesn’t necessarily mean a speedy sale!

It is so stressful. Similar position. First one/ chain broke. Relisted at a lower price. Accepted an offer and it’s taken 2 weeks for them to find a solicitor.

I always find home buying threads in the UK fascinating!

I’m in the US and from offer to ownership can be as little as 30 days! My DD made an offer on June 22 and was the proud owner of a house on July 23rd! There are binding contracts and timelines here with loss of large sums of money for people who don’t stick to the deal. I’d lose my mind if I had to go through what you’ve described. I hope your most recent buyer follows through and you can get moving soon.

It’s a bit on the slow side. When did they receive the draft contract package? Does that have the TA6 in it? I’ll be offering hopefully at some point. It will take me a few days to find a solicitor, then I’d like to see the TA6, and only then would I book a survey in.

It’s only ten days but I think buyers are more nervous now and also aware of the market so keep eyes out for other things.

@Lizzieregina there is a completely different system here which is slow and painful. For some reasons not enough want to change it.

Yes, I had the TA6 and TA10 forms with my solicitor the very next day who sent it straight across with the pack. So they've had all the paperwork for well over a week.

This is what I'm worried about. The estate agent has made us take the house off the market when accepting their offer. So we can't keep looking for a backup buyer in case they change their minds. Yet our buyers are allowed to keep looking around and taking their time..

I think they’ll have to be sort a mortgage before they can get a survey done
which if your both working isn’t an easy task if your going via a broker

I was told they don't need a mortgage! That's why I picked them over other buyers.

10 days isn’t long at all - as above, my first action is to apply for the mortgage. I’ll have had an agreement in principle but you then need to apply with the named property manager etc. I usually instruct survey later on, but would probably have kicked off the solicitor process already. When moving last year though, our solicitor didn’t send out searches until the chain was completing above - so many chains break down they said to give it some time to conclude above. No one can move until it’s all linked in the chain above anyway.

Speaking from the buyer side of a chain right now:: ten days without a survey booking is annoying but genuinely normal, especially if they are waiting for their morgage offer first (some buyers book the survey early, plenty wait for the offer so they are not paying for a survey on a house they cannot fund). The way to tell a slow starter from a future collapse is not the silence itself, it is whether milestones keep appearing:: solicitor instructed, mortgage application in, survey booked. I would ask the agent for those three with dates, framed as "we just want a shared timeline", and then agree a weekly check-in so you are not refreshing your phone in the dark - silence is what breaks sellers, not slowness. Two harder truths from watching friends sell. First, a cash buyer at the bottom feels safe but cash buyers are also the ones who renegotiate at the eleventh hour, so "simple chain" is never as simple as it looks. Second, after your first collapse every quiet week will feel like the same story starting again - that is trauma, not evidence, and the current buyers should not have to pay for the last ones. Keep the listing technically live and dont discourage the agent from keeping backup buyers warm; knowing you have options is the only real cure for the powerlessness. Fingers crossed the survey booking lands this week.

We have a complete chain and I was told the buyers don't need a mortgage.

Thank you. Yes, I think it is a lot of trauma coming through from the previous failed sale. How do we keep the listing live when estate agent says we have to take it down? I don't want to seem awkward and uncommitted to these buyers, I really want to sell to them but this is my children's lives they're messing around with and I need a backup. We're all exhausted from the long commute to school that we started in September ( I had to make e decision on accepting school places near the new house before previous sale had exchanged). The kids love their new school but we're still stuck in this house miles away and I'm so worried we are about to be messed around again by second set of buyers.

Same - I’m in NZ, we settled four weeks after first offer when we sold a place early this year. Moving and buying and selling is stressful enough without this rigmarole.

fingers crossed for you OP, hope things move quickly for you.

A motivated buyer doesn't fuck about. We offered on 30th September last year on the premise we moved before Christmas. Mortgage offered on 4th October, survey done end of the week. Exchanged on 18th Novembe, completed 12 December, moved 18th December I was on the phone to someone everyday asking what we could next to keep things moving, we had no chain but you still need to keep on at them. By framing it as what can we do it didn't get anyone's back up.

You sound like the perfect buyer! Why can't I find one like you? We had a few to choose from this time and it was a difficult decision, we didn't go for the highest offer but went for the buyers that the agent said would be the most straightforward. And here we are I think with some more time wasters. I'm wondering if we should go back to the other buyers who missed out? If we leave it too long they'll have moved on.

I am top of a small chain. I accepted below asking price offer in late May. Legal team appointed straight after offer accepted. I completed TA6 and TA10 in late June. Survey mid-July. Prospective buyers have been in house 4 times including accompanying surveyor and builder. I have removal firm arranged for 2 1/2 weeks. I own house I am moving into. Current issue requires an indemnity policy for my purchaser's house. Who knows?

Its really important that you know exactly what proof of funds your agent has seen. If you dont get confirmation that the buyer has proved funds what it often means is that they won't need a mortgage - once such and such sale goes through or such and such finance has appeared !
For your own piece of mind at this stage you need to insist on proof of funds detail.

From my experience and that of friends, when buyers drag their feet about getting the survey done, they’re planning to use it to lower their offer. Before we’d found our new house, our buyers were constantly asking our estate agent if we could hurry up. Once we’d found our place and got our survey etc it was radio silence for weeks. Eventually, when we were as far down the buying process as we could get, they got their survey done and then threatened to pull out unless we dropped the price by £50k. They knew they had us over a barrel as our onward purchase was quite niche and we were selling a very nice but not unusual semi-detached house in London. I fantasised for ages about leaving a kipper behind a radiator in the loft ….