Reasonable time to find a new house?

sg0102

Hi there,

We are in the process of putting our house on the market, with a view to selling before we look to buy - putting ourselves in the strongest buying position.

I have a slight apprehension on being left with a sold property and not finding the "right" property to buy.

What is a "reasonable" period to expect any purchasers of our house to wait until we find that property? I anticipate the buyers of ours to be FTB.

Any thoughts, or experiences to share would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance
Steve

Tancred

sg0102 wrote: »

Hi there,

We are in the process of putting our house on the market, with a view to selling before we look to buy - putting ourselves in the strongest buying position.

I have a slight apprehension on being left with a sold property and not finding the "right" property to buy.

What is a "reasonable" period to expect any purchasers of our house to wait until we find that property? I anticipate the buyers of ours to be FTB.

Any thoughts, or experiences to share would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance
Steve

I think a maximum of 60 days would be acceptable. Exceeding this time would really be unfair on your buyers in my opinion, but 60 days should be enough time to find and make an acceptable offer on another property.

sg0102

thanks - I should have added - we are first time sellers, so experiencing all this for the first time!!

Mr_Moo_2

Maybe consider renting if you do sell and can't find what you want?

martinsurrey

If you ask for 60 days before even starting the legal’s I would expect a FTB to tell you to give them a call when you’re ready to go, they have the power in today’s market and I for one would keep looking if I was them.

2 months of you looking and then a typical 3 month chain, so 5 months from offer to completion...

Start viewing properties now and have a rolling list of proceed-able places (that match your criteria) and be ready to move fast when you get a buyer (if you don’t someone else will and you might lose them).

Tancred

martinsurrey wrote: »

If you ask for 60 days before even starting the legal’s I would expect a FTB to tell you to give them a call when you’re ready to go, they have the power in today’s market and I for one would keep looking if I was them.

2 months of you looking and then a typical 3 month chain, so 5 months from offer to completion...

Start viewing properties now and have a rolling list of proceed-able places (that match your criteria) and be ready to move fast when you get a buyer (if you don’t someone else will and you might lose them).

It can take 6 months quite easily to complete a chain purchase. I don't think up to 60 days is unreasonable for finding a property - it's not something you can rush into. Anwyay, in most cases I would expect you would find something in 2-3 weeks if you are willing to invest the time and effort to view properties.

cycloneuk

To be honest i would start to get impatient after 2 weeks, but i wouldn't offer on a property if i knew the vendors would take up to 2 months to find somewhere. Your best looking on right move and preparing a list of properties that you would like to view, once you get an offer you have a good list to start on hopefully.

martinsurrey

Tancred wrote: »

It can take 6 months quite easily to complete a chain purchase. I don't think up to 60 days is unreasonable for finding a property - it's not something you can rush into. Anwyay, in most cases I would expect you would find something in 2-3 weeks if you are willing to invest the time and effort to view properties.

The average time from the offer at the bottom (FTB) to completion of a normal chain (so around 4 long) is 14 weeks (from my experience, not my own purchases!).

If everyone in a chain took 2 months from accepting an offer to making one, a 4 person chain would be 6 months to get to offer at the top, before any legal’s could start.

It CAN take up to 6 months for a chain to complete, but that’s far from normal, and is normally the fault of a single party or property and as 25% of all chains fail I bet these 6 month-ers are the very lucky ones.

A first time buyer who hears nothing for 2 months WILL be looking at other places, and you are more than likely going to lose them.

As I and cyclone have said, be ready to move quickly if you are lucky enough to get a buyer who’s ready to go.

On a side note, Tancred, how’s your sale going? Been a couple of weeks, and I see its still on RM with a price change.

phoebe1989seb

cycloneuk wrote: »

To be honest i would start to get impatient after 2 weeks, but i wouldn't offer on a property if i knew the vendors would take up to 2 months to find somewhere. Your best looking on right move and preparing a list of properties that you would like to view, once you get an offer you have a good list to start on hopefully.

We did this - were looking to buy a project house in Southern counties where these tend to be few and far between - and our buyers (the third link in the chain) were happy to wait a short while whilst we did so.

Having prepped a list of potentially suitable houses before putting ours on the market and grading them according to our stringent criteria list helped narrow the field.

Despite being taken by surprise and accepting an offer on ours within a fortnight, we succeeded in finding the perfect project house relatively quickly, even though we were living some 200 miles outside our search area.......

At one stage we did feel our buyers (quite understandably) getting a little restless - we pulled out of two purchases after unforeseen obstacles cropped up - but despite the odds being sacked against us, from going to market to completion took us less than 3 months in total, going to show that if you get your ducks in a row it can go according to plan

WATTY1978

Hi
we did this too. we were very honest with viewers from the start. our house sold after six weeks much to our surprise. it was over christmas which made finding another quite difficult. we were luck our buyers were willing to wait. we asked to the end of jan to find and said we would rent if they wanted to move sooner. we secured a place begining of feb and things are now progressing. the sale of mine is almost ready but were waiting for my purchase and the rest of the chain to catch up.
Its a chance you have to take because the alternative is finding a place too soon and someone buying it from under you.
We did make a short list early on but didnt view until we had quite a few viewers. we didnt end up with any of these houses and sat waiting for one to come up. i've checked the market since out of curiosity and if this house hadnt come up for sale i reckon we would be renting instead. We ended up paying full asking price though because we felt under pressure to secure and cut out the games. it was hard to hide our desperation when we viewed and offered the same day it came on the market. couldnt waste anymore time.
very stressful but things will come together in the end.
Good luck

jackomdj

We pulled out of a house purchase after 6 weeks because they had not found anywhere and were not willing to move to rented. Actually what we did was say that we would start looking elsewhere, which we did and ended up buying a house two doors away from the original one.

When we pulled out the ea actually said that he did not think the wife wanted to move and as it is they took it off the market within a few weeks.

Personally I would start thinking about where you want to live, the type of house etc so it is fairly easy to look as soon as you get an offer.

Eta we wanted to move quite quickly as we were going to rent our old house out and had someone interested who was moving out of their family home, which meant no letting fees each month, however we did not want to make them wait too long. As it was the people selling our new house were emigrating so it all happened quickly.