Currently in the process of selling our house. Accepted an offer on Friday evening, so moving onto Solicitors etc now. We’ve got 2 potential houses in our ‘maybe’ list, both exceptionally local to us now, about 100m from our current house. Both within budget and both nice.

So, Mrs W rekons that when we offer on them, the people buying our have to wait and enter the chain of people, personally i’m not convinced they will accept that and will want the turn-around of purchasing ours quicker than that could potentially end up being… MAybe i’m just being pessimistic on this, but my perception is that our house isn’t the easiest in the world to sell (although it was only on the market for 4 weeks I admit), so I think we should do whatever it takes to get ours sold and done, then worry about ourselves after facilitating that.

I’ve now quite worked out how exactly we could do that side of things, we don’t have any viable options other than I guess a 6 month rental, which would give us plenty of time, but considering the chain could easily complete within 1 or 2 months in that scenario, would be a massive waste of money too.

But I don’t want to risk losing our buyer by making them wait.

We don’t have any family within 90 mins drive, so getting our lad to school each day wouldn’t work. We don’t have anyone nearby we could move in with for a while and make that work etc.

Am I being overly paranoid or is it quite normal to have an epic wait ?

The couple buying ours are currently in rented accommodation in London and looking to move out to the sticks and have chosen ours.

A friend of mine sold their house and managed to get another friend of theirs to put them up for a short time until they got the new house. They said while the temp accomodation wasn’t ideal it made the whole selling and buying thing a lot easier and made them more attractive as buyers too. Renting a place short term would have the same effect.
There is another advantage when you buy the new place in that you can overlap your rental after you have the keys for the new place. 2 or 3 weeks overlap means you can look at the empty house and get it decorated/changed to your choice while its empty. Trying to do it when you’ve moved in is a lot harder. Another friend of mine did this and made a top job of sanding all their wooden floors, varnishing and cleaning up before they moved in. Would have been an utter nightmare once they were in to do that.

Agree totally.. but not sure a 3 month rental is viable. It may be something to look into though. I agree it would make some of the moving transition a lot simpler.

Its a tough one to be fair. We had the same last year. Sold ours and hadn’t found anywhere so because we had a good price for ours we didn’t want to lose the seller. Told them we’d just sell up and rent temporarily. About 3 weeks into the process, the perfect house came on the market for us and they accepted our offer. We told our solicitor, and they then ‘joined’ all the transactions together. It meant our buyer had to wait longer, but delays happen, and it all went through perfectly. In my experience if you have a solid buyer that’s a massive part of the process taken care of. I’d plan on going into rented and hope something comes up in the meantime.

Stressful times.

This is probably the prime reason house purchase/sales fall through – an issue somewhere in a chain. At least our buyer is in rental. It’s not that unusual to have buyers/sellers actually changing before a chain completes. So an “epic wait” is very possible.

Plan A is obviously to find a house to buy PDQ (without compromising on what you want) and manage your sale to the same timescale, i.e. stretch it out a bit but in such as way as to avoid losing your buyer. I imagine your buyer will have a notice period on their rental, could be 2 months. I would be careful not to over promise to them so they give notice on their rental and then press you.

Rentals, have a search around you may find a rental available on a monthly basis, “serviced apartment” type. Whatever you do if you cannot match the purchase and sale you are going to be spending some money including potentially on furniture storage.

You may have to be creative, perhaps your son could stay with a friend during the week, perhaps rotating around a couple over the weeks. Take a holiday etc.

Unless you sold your house as no chain then your buyer should expect to have to wait around a bit, it’s the nature of house buying. Make sure they don’t put notice in until you’ve exchanged contracts, not your problem but if they do and something happens to the sale they could end up homeless. Likewise, if you do decide to go into rented you can/should not commit to a rental contract until you’ve exchanged, or you could end up with rent and a mortgage to pay if anything goes wrong.

Don’t expect things to go too fast either! We’re in the process of buying in a very short chain – us (in rented), our vendor (buying a flat), his vendor (top of chain, moving into rented). It should have been a really fast process, but there is a leasehold at the top of the chain and some questions have come up on the lease. Nothing major but it’s taking time to resolve. I was optimistically hoping we’d have moved in by now, after only two months(!), but we haven’t even exchanged yet.

I don’t particularly like it but we’re having to be patient as we’re both financially and emotionally committed to the house and understand delays happen. Hopefully your buyers would be the same.

If I were you I’d speak to your buyer, explain your dilemma, and see what they say. You could always set a time limit of say 2 months to find somewhere to buy, at which point if you haven’t found anything you could take a 6 month rental. If your buyer sees that you’re trying to be accommodating they’re less likely to walk away.

We potentially have somewhere else to buy, offer going in today and we’re pretty convinced that we can come to an agreement. But it’s then a question of what they can/will do on their side to allow us to get our side completed quickly and easily

They can only do what they can do. What makes you think your buyers are expecting a fast turnaround?

@weeksy – fyi we just got a convenacing quote from TWM, very pleasantly surpassed at cicra £1,000 all in inc VAT

tonyd – Member

They can only do what they can do. What makes you think your buyers are expecting a fast turnaround?

Just my perception from the conversation I had with our agent on Friday evening, although Mrs Weeksy is going to clarify the information today with them.

Once you know where you stand with regard to the offer you’ve just made and any potential upward chain you might be getting into, get the contact details for your buyers (sometimes easier said than done as estate agents are very protective!!). Have a chat about their timescale expectations and explain where you are in the process. If you’re flexible and looking at other options to facilitate the sale (as per your original post) you might find they are quite accommodating. I’ve never had good experiences talking via estate agents but as soon as you chat directly people tend to be a lot more understanding…

Agree with dashed, depending on your estate agent of course. The one we’re dealing with (purchase) is actually quite normal and I trust that they are being open and honest with me (to a degree of course). If that weren’t the case I’d have been in direct contact with our vendor.

IME so long as expectations are set correctly from the start and everyone communicates you should be fine.

Good luck by the way.

I would agree what the others have said, somebody buying expects a reasonable wait to get it. It is up to you and your agent to keep them updated on progress and gauge what delay would be a deal breaker for them.

As much as you don’t want to lose the buyer, they must really like the house or they wouldn’t have offered.

Congrats on the sale BTW!

Yep, communication is key.

Am I being overly paranoid or is it quite normal to have an epic wait ?

Friends of ours had their offer accepted in July 2012 but didn’t pick up the keys until June 2013. Vendors were complete ****s.

We had an offer accepted on a house in June and due to this vendor also being a complete and utter ****, there is no chance of exchanging until next year. He won’t do any of the remedial repairs by the book nor submit a Party Wall Notice (which he is obliged to).

Thanks guys,

I’m having the rather tense time of waiting to see if our offer on our potential new house is refused/accepted. It wasn’t TERRIBLE at £275k on a listed price of £295k…. but is fractionally chancing our hand I guess…. I’m sitting here VERY impatiently waiting…

It’s not like buying a bag of peanuts is it !!!

Good luck and keep us updated! Don’t be disheartened if they don’t accept first offer (I wouldn’t 😉 ) go back with a few grand more and you’ll prob get it. Everyone likes to feel they’ve “won” the negotiating 😆

We didn’t accept the first offer on ours either from the current buyers, however it was all done within 10 mins and 3 offers before we agreed.

It’s been an hour now…. JEEEEZ… what are they DOING !!!

They refused the offer.

If I was your buyer and I was chain free Id be pretty tough when it comes to negotiating
Do your buyers want to move quickly? They should have given an idea to your estate agent
Personally my offer would be conditional on moving in a reasonable period which is for you and them to agree on

The place you just had the offer rejected on is a different matter
Again its all dependent on the circumstances of the chain
How long has it been on the market?
Any other offers – if so anyone proceedable as you are?
Do they have somewhere to go to?
etc etc

I have only ever bought 2 houses
The second was us from rented accom to this house which a retired couple moved out of to a rental flat

Selling our first place earlier that year was a nightmare even though we were going into rented
We were at the mercy of some useless coffin dodgers buying it who ballsed things up at every stage including declaring that the place they were selling themselves had been underpinned the day before our first (of several) planned exchanges of contracts

Best of luck
Buying and selling houses leads to pretty strong opinions on the subject down the line when its all done and dusted

🙂

“We had an offer accepted on a house in June and due to this vendor also being a complete and utter ****, there is no chance of exchanging until next year. He won’t do any of the remedial repairs by the book nor submit a Party Wall Notice (which he is obliged to). “

which begs the question – why bother , lifes too short for that shit.

Minor update, mostly on the questions asked.
Our buyer is OK with some small delays in proceedings while we progress the purchase of the new house.

Our offer was increased y’day on the new house, we’re now at 5% below asking price with offer, however sadly (for me anyway) they didn’t give us an answer yesterday, so we’re sitting waiting. That place has been on the market since May 25th, ours was on for 5 weeks. They’ve had no other offers as of yet. They have the option to move somewhere/rent, I think they’re now holding out for us to financically assist them with that process so to speak.

We’re at the VERY top end of our budget now, but I worry if we don’t get this one, we’ll end up in rented for 6-12 months, during that time period the housing market goes up by 5-10% and we’re then left outside of our budget due to the £300k house now being £330k.

Part of me is sick of all this… part of me just wants to close the deal.

Part of me put the log burner on last night and sat there in my shorts not really giving a toss what happens 🙂

“during that time period the housing market goes up by 5-10% and we’re then left outside of our budget due to the £300k house now being £330k.”

where do you live ? thats a very speculative increase – i suspect that youll find once interest rates start to rise as the banks are speaking of and help to buy stops people will stop inflating prices with silly offers again for a while.

Possbily right mate, who knows really.

Anyway… we had to stick another £2500 on the offer to persuade them to move out ASAP into rented, so the chain is now just our buyers and us…. But it’s signed and sealed…

(pending paperwork and no-one pulling out etc of course)

good job. hope the rest goes smooth for you

Unless you were selling your house as ‘Chain free’ I wouldn’t be concerned, unless the buyers are a little naive about this.

FWIW our sale is relatively simple, our purchasers are buying to let and we’re moving into a chain free house, yet it still seems to take forever.

Well done weeksy. As much as it pains me to say it, that £2.5k was probably worth it just for the peace of mind. I never thought I could bring myself to do it, but we paid over asking for the place we’re buying.

Agree totally mate. I think we’ve paid a decent price… but not a bargain… but the house should be a home for 20 years… not just a weekend.

if you can try and have a chat with your seller and buyer. We moved into our new place a couple of months ago and the whole process was relatively stress-free until the week before exchange when someone down the chain started throwing their weight around. (was actually the daughter of the lady buying which made it more irritating).

Being able to speak to both the person above us (the top of the chain), as well as our buyer (who was 3rd from bottom), made a big difference to stress levels. Was able to co-ordinate solicitors and agents to sort the issue out / impress upon the idiot the consequences of their spitting the dummy.

Good luck.

(oh, and not sure there’s much in the way of a bargain to be had in the housing market at the moment, certainly not down our way in Sussex)

which begs the question – why bother , lifes too short for that shit.

Lovely house, nice garden with office/playroom, PERFECT location. The demand for that type of property in this area is huge, hence wanting to hold on. But it ain’t gonna happen though so we have first option on another one.

But it’s signed and sealed.

Really? So contracts were exchanged within 24hrs of offer acceptance? That must be some kind of record 😯

Seriously, nothing is signed and sealed until after exchange.

Really? So contracts were exchanged within 24hrs of offer acceptance? That must be some kind of record

Seriously, nothing is signed and sealed until after exchange.

You know what I meant… what’s the point being pedantic ?

You’re better than that.

Congrats mate, good luck with the rest of the process

I’m not really being pedantic as these things can go completely t1ts up. Best of luck though, seriously.

I know mate, but I felt it was clear that I was making the point they’d agreed to the purchase price, not that we’d moved to exchange of contract.

I’m more than aware it can go completely pear shaped at any stage of proceedings.

BTW, I’m very bitter about the whole house buying thing at the mo due to not only the current vendor being a complete ****, but also the EA being full of incompetent *****s incapable of empathising or dealing with any of the issues at hand. The amount of sh1t hidden costs being brushed under the carpet is a joke.

Fair point… but you’re not bitter with me… i’m not in your chain 🙂

Fair point… but you’re not bitter with me… i’m not in your chain

At least, you don’t think you are……

i’m not in your chain

You could be … if you have a 4 bed in Surrey then the owners of the other house we have first dibs on might be interested 😀 as they’re still looking 🙁

If I had a 4 bed house in Surrey we wouldn’t have this thread at all.