Chain-free house suddenly has a chain

nomie44

We're well along the line of buying a house, which we were told was chain-free. Now the seller's circumstances have changed and they are buying on (with another 2 houses above them in a chain). Apart from the fact that they never bothered to tell us (or their EA), until I had a panicked call from my EA, we need to exchange in 2 weeks because we have to apply for schooling and have a local address. Just wondered if anyone else has been in this situation. As far as I'm concerned, they should go and rent until their house is ready, as I think they have been rather sneaky. They had time to go and find a house and put an offer in, but not time to tell us things had changed. We told our buyer we would find a chain-free house as their buyer is FTB, so we had a lovely short chain. Now it's going to pot. The vendor says they can't rent because they have several animals, but I am not feeling charitable and think they should bite the bullet. I have had to put my animals into boarding kennels when we've moved before and think the onus should be on them to sort it. EA's are working on it, but wondered if anyone has gone through same thing and how it resolved.

silvercar

We had exactly the same. The answer was for someone to use the address of the house they were buying, even though they hadn't exchanged.

kazzymac_2

We had this too. We were moving from London to Norfolk and the children were due to start school in New Year. The people we were buying from were moving to Wales and had decided that they would rent until they found somewhere. They did find somewhere which had a chain. We had no alternative but to wait but in the meantime we rented a holiday house for 4 weeks until it was completed as our main concern was getting the children into the school when they were supposed to. Very stressful time though but the thought of pulling out was too stressful and costly so we felt like we had no other option.

nomie44

silvercar - the council have told us we must show proof of exchange of contract to use the address. We can still apply using our London address (helpful in the home counties!) but we need that proof apparently.

Richard_Webster

This sort of thing happens all the time.

Did you talk to the sellers themselves about the fact they were moving out on completion of the sale without buying anything? Often estate agents ask sellers if they would prepared to move out and the sellers feel pushed into a corner and say something like "Well.... I suppose we might be able to to stay with the wife's parents for a few weeks...we'd need to see if they would agree that..."

Agent doesn't hear any of the qualifications and tells buyers that the sellers are definitely moving out. So I often hear these stories of how sellers feel they have been put in an awkward situation because the agents told the buyers they would definitely move out when they were by no means so clear and definite. Obviously if that's the case it is very much down to the agent to sort it out.

Of course the sellers may have been deliberately deceitful and if that is the case all you can do is play a poker game of bluff about pulling out. It really then depends on how desperate they are to sell and whether they can risk losing you. You may have already told the agents too much about needing to move quickly though and you may not be in a strong position to threaten to walk away.

nomie44

Richard I know what you're saying, but this wasn't the case here. The partner had already moved to Scotland, so other partner was relocating to be with them, so they wanted to move really quickly. Now they are splitting up and the one left in the house is buying locally. If we had been told this when it happened, we would probably have found somewhere else that was definitely chain-free.

Running_Horse

We had this, and made it clear we had only bought on condition there was no chain, and under no circumstances would we proceed if there was one. The chain suddenly disappeared, but only go down this route if you are prepared to back up that threat. We only made the threat due to a series of delays and problems that had already messed us around for months.

Richard_Webster

Richard I know what you're saying, but this wasn't the case here. The partner had already moved to Scotland, so other partner was relocating to be with them, so they wanted to move really quickly. Now they are splitting up and the one left in the house is buying locally. If we had been told this when it happened, we would probably have found somewhere else that was definitely chain-free.

So the one left will probably be prepared to wait and find another buyer if you pull out. Very annoying, but I doubt there is much you can do about it.