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Will our chain ever end!?
emilyjanes
Posts: 7 Forumite
This is my first time posting on here but I have had a look at a lot of the posts and they seem really helpful so I hope someone will be able to help me!
We sold our house really quickly (luckily) back in February and found somewhere to buy that weekend. We had our offer accepted on the Tues. The vendors of our new property then found a new property that weekend and had an offer accepted. As you can imagine at this point we were extatic! However we are now in May and the people our vendors have bought from STILL haven't found a property to buy! We have (attempted) to contact both parties above us in the chain this week through the Estate Agent to see if any of them are willing to move out to shorten the chain. We have been told that they are not (except we still aren't sure that they have been properly contacted) but we don't have any more information than that. We have started looking at other properties online but can't see anything that suits us as well as the property we have already bought. We therefore don't mind waiting for it but at the moment have NO IDEA when we could be waiting until! What if the chain never ends? Our main fear is that we will wait all of this time and then it will fall through and it would have all been a waste of time.
We have now received the contracts from our buyer's solicitor and are about to exchange. We have the possibility of moving in to my parents' house so that we don't lose our buyer so we are lucky in that sense but we don't want to move in there forever!
We haven't even had the survey done on our new property because we didn't want to spend out the money until the chain was complete and the end was in sight. I have however read some advice that you shouldn't exchange on your sale until you at least exchange on your purchase (even if completion date is not at the same time). The worry we have about this though is that once we exchange not only are they tied in but we are too. If it then ends up being months or even years before the chain completes we are stuck and don't have the option of looking and moving elsewhere.
Has anyone ever been in this situation? What options do we have? Could we exchange with the condition that we complete by a certain date and then if we don't we can pull out and look elsewhere?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
We sold our house really quickly (luckily) back in February and found somewhere to buy that weekend. We had our offer accepted on the Tues. The vendors of our new property then found a new property that weekend and had an offer accepted. As you can imagine at this point we were extatic! However we are now in May and the people our vendors have bought from STILL haven't found a property to buy! We have (attempted) to contact both parties above us in the chain this week through the Estate Agent to see if any of them are willing to move out to shorten the chain. We have been told that they are not (except we still aren't sure that they have been properly contacted) but we don't have any more information than that. We have started looking at other properties online but can't see anything that suits us as well as the property we have already bought. We therefore don't mind waiting for it but at the moment have NO IDEA when we could be waiting until! What if the chain never ends? Our main fear is that we will wait all of this time and then it will fall through and it would have all been a waste of time.
We have now received the contracts from our buyer's solicitor and are about to exchange. We have the possibility of moving in to my parents' house so that we don't lose our buyer so we are lucky in that sense but we don't want to move in there forever!
We haven't even had the survey done on our new property because we didn't want to spend out the money until the chain was complete and the end was in sight. I have however read some advice that you shouldn't exchange on your sale until you at least exchange on your purchase (even if completion date is not at the same time). The worry we have about this though is that once we exchange not only are they tied in but we are too. If it then ends up being months or even years before the chain completes we are stuck and don't have the option of looking and moving elsewhere.
Has anyone ever been in this situation? What options do we have? Could we exchange with the condition that we complete by a certain date and then if we don't we can pull out and look elsewhere?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
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Comments
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Normally you'd exchange with a specified date and anybody who could not complete on that date would be legally responsible for the costs that their failure to move out caused. But I doubt the problem party would agree to exchange seeing they can't be bothered to find a property. Personally I'd give them a deadline and say you're pulling out of the chain if progress isn't made. That tends to focus the mind.
We were in a chain of 7 and it was a nightmare. It went on for 5 months and collapsed twice only to be rescued at literally the last hour by a cash buyer who by pure chance was desperate for a house on that specific road. The longer chains progress the more scope there is for problems - mortgage offers expiring, people seeing more attractive properties, having second thoughts etc.0 -
Thank you artbaron.
We will have to consider a deadline. The thing we are worried about most is that there doesn't seem to be anything else of interest out there. If we pull out we could end up in another chain that is just as bad or even worse!0 -
This is the problem with the current market - lack of availability. Even if you are lucky enough to find the right property at the right price the chain could kill the deal. Hence the importance of finding the magic 'no chain' scenario.0
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This is the problem with the current market - lack of availability. Even if you are lucky enough to find the right property at the right price the chain could kill the deal. Hence the importance of finding the magic 'no chain' scenario.
Which raises the question - what constitutes "no chain"?
Does this mean just if the vendor is moving out into rented/has already moved out into rented? Does it also include probate houses? Does it include ones where the person living there will genuinely move out when required to some other place?0 -
This thread confuses me.....you can end the chain at your end just by preparing to move to your parents.....you are about to exchange below so its probably you that are annoying your buyers !
Its in your hands to complete the chain!Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.0 -
Plus when you buy ,you will be in an attractive position as chain free and that alone could give you the edge !Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.0
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they need to make offers binding on the buyer and seller to stop this kind of nightmare happening!!
the amount if time and money wasted by failing chains, only god knows!
then people only put their house up for sale if they are actually serious, instead of dragging people along for months like this!
hope it all sorts itself out quickly...0 -
This thread confuses me.....you can end the chain at your end just by preparing to move to your parents.....you are about to exchange below so its probably you that are annoying your buyers !
Its in your hands to complete the chain!
We are the bottom of the chain...Our buyer is a first time buyer who is happy (at the momnent) to wait and as soon as she isn't we will move to my parents. The problem is though is that there are 2 couples in the chain ABOVE us. We could end up living at my parents forever if the people at the top of the chain don't ever find anywhere. Hope that clarifies things...0 -
emilyjanes wrote: »We are the bottom of the chain...Our buyer is a first time buyer who is happy (at the momnent) to wait and as soon as she isn't we will move to my parents.
As the one a the bottom of the chain you have all the power in the chain. Especially when you have option such as moving with your parents (temporarily).
Give them deadline and more importantly don't stop looking.0 -
I've been in a similar position, tho only 3 of us, our buyers brought our house end of January, we found another one week later and offer accepted. Our sellers were going into residential only to decide no they wanted to buy. My buyer was becoming increasingly pressuring on us and so we took the risk to exchange on Friday and we complete June. My sellers have now found somewhere a few weeks back (no chain) and so now we are hoping to complete the same date, if not we are ready to storage and hotel with the kids. However due to the time it's taken we did advise our seller that should we have to move into temporary accommodation due to their slowness I will be expecting a % towards my temporary accommodation and storage costs which I wouldn't have occurred. I have taken the risk to secure the sale. It will end eventually for you but maybe you should try to enforce a date (mortgages have an expiry anyway). Best of luck
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