Complicated chain...bound to fail?

MsDelta

Hi all,

I'm after some advice on a property chain I currently find myself in.

I'll try and be concise... Husband and I own a 2 bed house and have our first baby on the way so planned to buy a 3 bed family home that we can stay in for a little while. We accepted an offer on our place 3 weeks ago from what we were told was a cash buyer so it was taken off the market, we then started searching, found somewhere and had our offer acepted this week, so far so good. The place we have found is on with the same agent so win win for them too..

The issue is that our cash buyer, will only be a cash buyer upon exchange on the flat he is selling. We were told this was all about to go through when we accepted the offer, but as of now 3 weeks later it hasn't (he is top of a 3 part chain, and someone's mortgage offer lower down has expired- casuing the hold up). Because our 'cash buyer' isn't proceedable, the vendor of what i'm already thinking of as our house won't take it off the market. The estate agent isn't actively marketing the house anymore, but it is on with another agent.

God reading all that makes my head hurt.

my question is, should we ask the estate agent to kep marketing our property, or will this put our buyer off. His soliciotrs have already started raising enquiries with our solicitors and he has been checked out financially by the estate agent so on paper he is a good buyer, or at least will be once he has released his cash to buy our place. We were on the market for almost a year before this offer came in and didnt have any serious offers before this one, so we're not really in a position to pressure the buyer as the issues in the chain are not his. But in the meantime our dream house is still on rightmove and everywhere else and I am getting really stressed out that this sort of chain is bound to fail and we will loose out.

The Market in our area is very limited for 3 beds that tick all our boxes and are are in our price bracket and we are lucky to have found what we have found for the price that we have found just before having our first child,

Any advice on this type of chain and what we can do going forwards would be much appreciated.

Kittenonthekeys

We were in a similar position to you. Our house had been on the market for 5 months before we got our first offer.
About a month in, our buyer's buyer lost his job so had to withdraw.
Although the house we were buying was taken off the market by the agent we had offered through, it remained 'for sale' with a second agent (although as with you, they were not actively marketing it.)
Our buyers immediately put their place back on the market in the hope of securing another offer quickly and despite having spent about £1K on surveys, legal fees, etc, were honest enough to suggest we remarketed too, which in the end we had to if we were not to lose the house we were buying.
We quickly received an offer from a new buyer with no chain which is proceeding now and we are all expecting to exchange next week. Although we feared we would lose the house we were buying, we did not, as the sellers (unusually tolerant!) said they wanted to sell to us and would allow us a few months for the chain to re-form - which it did.
So I would say get communicating directly with your buyer and seller, if you are not already doing this. It's truly amazing what you can achieve this way. Apart from anything else, if you can get them on side you don't feel quite so alone if things go wrong - and I also think they are far less likely to welsh on the deal or mess you around if they know they are dealing with real people rather than just anonymous names on a sales memorandum.
Both our buyer and seller have been very proactive in chasing and getting stuff done - and keeping us updated. I really can't stress how important that has been to us.
Unfortunately the wheels of the lender and solicitor can move very slowly - and of course it can all only ever move at the pace of the slowest in the chain.
If things don't start happening soon, you may have to consider remarketing your house, Just because it took so long to get an offer, doesn't mean you won't get an offer more quickly second time around as we did. Things seem to be moving again.
In fact our original buyers received an offer on their property just the day after we'd accepted the new buyer's offer, and came back to offer us more money to re-instate them, but we had to say no, it was too late. The same could easily happen to you.

PasturesNew

Yes, keep marketing your property... I'd have never stopped in the first place. Tell your buyer that you're not looking to get more money, but just don't want to miss out. Tell them you're not proceeding with new buyers, just marketing and taking note of any interest.

Be open, be fair.

I did that when I sold mine: I kept marketing it and said "I'm not going to accept higher offers, this is 'just in case' ...."

Cannon_Fodder

I do wish people would be honest and accurate about their position. If only EAs were remotely competent and could check the facts reliably.

If you'd known up-front that there was a chain, it would not have necessarily altered anything, as chains are a necessary evil of house-buying.

But, you've gone to your vendor and are now having to back-track, so it has potentialy upset them - they might be posting a similar question in another thread "do these buyers sound like time-wasters, changing their story"...!

Meanwhile, you are stressing because of the dis-information from your buyer/EA.

You need to tell your EA to put your place back on the market, ask them to inform the "cash buyer" that he will have first refusal as soon as his chain is solidified, but that you cannot risk missing proceedable buyers new to the market.

If he tells people further down the chain that he's getting some pressure from above, maybe they'll get their act together. After all, if the EA didn't know the whole story when the offer was made, who is to know what the real story is?

MsDelta

Hi all, thanks for the advice. All seems pretty unanimous that we are within our rights to keep marketing our property. I've asked the estate agents to sensitively communicate it to the vendor that we are not going back on our acceptance of his offer, but that we do need to be sure he is proceedable before we commit to him. Estate agents have done this and have in act booked in a viewing for the weekend.. so we'll see.

@Kittenonthekeys, your story does fill me with a bit more hope! You say we should keep lines of communication open directly with the buyer and vendor, but in reality how do you go about doing that? Our solicitor talks directly to the other sides solicitor, but has no direct contact with the vendor, and I doubt if the estate agents would give us the vendors contact details... willing to try anything that works so some practical tips would be much appreciated.

This is all a learning curve for us as we have never sold as part of a chain before, my last sale was 3 years ago to a FTB and we ad already bought our house, so very different situation... in future we will only accept offers from people that are proceedable!
Thanks all

Fire_Fox

Why are you putting yourself through this stress? You have a baby on the way who will sleep in your bedroom for the first few months and you already have a two bedroom house!! You know a three bed won't last you for long, and the bills will be higher so why not stay put and trade up to a four bedroom when you have the time and money? Nesting hormones do not always choose the right house.

MissMotivation

Why do buyers lie about their position and why do EA's not check the facts! Checking whether someone is a 'cash' buyer, or not, is so easy.

Get your EA to keep marketing your property and ask them why they didn't check that he had the cash in the bank.

Cannon Fodders advice is spot-on!

MsDelta

We have had the 'why do you need to move thing' from a couple of people (including my parents with their tales of raising their first in a 1 bed bedsit) Realise many people manage in unsuitable houses through necessity and of course it wouldn't be the end of the world if we were to stay in our house....

But we're lucky enough to be in a position to move somewhere more suitable to the next phase in our life, with parks and family friendly facilities nearby, better schools, a nicer road, big garden, all that stuff.... Our 2 bed house is literally 2 up 2 down, you walk straight into the lounge from the road, has no real garden to speak of, no storage, and a baby crib wouldn't even fit in our bedroom! It's very much starter house for young couples or single people and we've been fine here for the first 3 years of marriage, but now it's time for the grown up house, which fingers crossed will happen for us :-). We also don't know what my work situation will be when i've finished maternity leave (may work part time for example), so income will be lower for the nxt few years at least, so now is def the right time for us. Fingers crossed the 2 kids plan work out so we won't grow out of a 3 bed!

As for nesting hormones, I don't really believe in that whole 'baby brain' thing, maybe that will kick in down the line (i'm due in august ), but for now am thinking pretty logically! :-)

SinkingFast

Good luck with it all MsDelta. It is so exciting moving onto the next phase of your life!

Kittenonthekeys

MsDelta wrote: »

Hi all, thanks for the advice. All seems pretty unanimous that we are within our rights to keep marketing our property. I've asked the estate agents to sensitively communicate it to the vendor that we are not going back on our acceptance of his offer, but that we do need to be sure he is proceedable before we commit to him. Estate agents have done this and have in act booked in a viewing for the weekend.. so we'll see.

@Kittenonthekeys, your story does fill me with a bit more hope! You say we should keep lines of communication open directly with the buyer and vendor, but in reality how do you go about doing that? Our solicitor talks directly to the other sides solicitor, but has no direct contact with the vendor, and I doubt if the estate agents would give us the vendors contact details... willing to try anything that works so some practical tips would be much appreciated.

This is all a learning curve for us as we have never sold as part of a chain before, my last sale was 3 years ago to a FTB and we ad already bought our house, so very different situation... in future we will only accept offers from people that are proceedable!
Thanks all

There are a couple of ways to do this.
When your sale/purchase offers were accepted, the estate agents involved would have (or should have) sent you a sales memorandum, giving your buyer's name and address, together with their solicitor's contact details - and another memorandum for your purchase listing your seller's details (whose address you will obviously already know!) and details of their solicitor.
Your buyer and seller, in turn will also have been sent a memorandum with your address and solicitor details.
Phone numbers will generally not be included in a sales memorandum but it's relatively easy to get hold of them.
If the EAs won't tell you (although there's no logical reason why they should not) then you could either ask your solicitor to pass on your phone no. to their solicitor to pass onto them, or just write the buyer and/or seller a letter directly and give them your phone no. (Are you still with me? )

I'd be willing to bet that provided they are serious about buying/selling, they will be delighted to have the opportunity to open the doors of communication with you as direct contact clears up so many misunderstandings and 'Chinese whispers' so common in property transactions.
And also to our amazement (and disgust) on comparing notes, we all found that almost everything we had been told by our solicitors had been either a cover-up for not doing their jobs properly, a delaying tactic, stretching the truth or just a downright lie.
Our seller asked our solicitor to contact us by passing on his phone nos. and inviting us to call him.
We swapped phone nos. with our buyer when he came to measure up.
We are so glad we did this because now at last we are getting the truth, we feel a lot stronger and less isolated (you may have read in another post about our totally useless agent and slow solicitor.)
Both buyer and seller are as motivated as us, chasing the sols every day and we all report back to each other via text!
But as I said, you do all have to be 100% committed to the move for this to work.