Selling/buying house in current situation

SPAT34

Hi, I've seen a few threads with people in the process of buying in the midst of Covid 19, but I haven't seen any threads where people are selling and buying, so I wanted to get some thoughts on it. We are in the process of buying and selling and we were originally heading towards completion at the end of April/beginning of May. We are in a relatively short chain with a cash buyer at the bottom, then the people selling that are buying our house, then we are buying a bigger chain free property. New mortgage is agreed on a good 5 year rate (80% LTV)  for the new borrowing and the same rate for porting our current mortgage over with 2.5 years left on the deal. Barring any major life changes we plan to be in this house for at least the next 15 years. I have a small self employed income which has ceased in the midst of this mess (hopefully I will qualify for the new help coming this evening). My husband has a very good income in what should be a very stable business where the company have already increased benefits during this period (he is working from home as normal at the moment, so no change in income). We agreed the mortgage payments on the new place, knowing we can quite comfortably manage without my income. As it stands things still seem to be progressing with the solicitors. Realistically we aren't going to be able to return signed contacts to our solicitor for at least the next three weeks as we can't get them witnessed so we have a bit of thinking time. I'm not hugely concerned about the value decreasing as it will be a long term house. I'm a little concerned that it might affect our ability to get a good new deal after our current mortgage deal ends in 2.5 years. Any thoughts? Am I missing anything else we should be considering?

SouthLondonUser

Some food for thought: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6119855/buy-now-or-pull-out-a-few-things-to-consider-no-im-not-predicting-house-prices

I would personally view the risk of a chain collapsing as too high, so I would pull out unless you can do exchange and completion on the same day, or your solicitor finds a legal way to exchange subject to your buyer not pulling out, i.e. some way so that if your buyer pulls out then your seller refunds your deposit and doesn't sue you. If your sellers don't like that, remind them they won't be selling to anyone until the crisis is over!

This is, of course, if you are happy with all the other points, e.g. you understand moving will be hard if not impossible for a while, that you may end up having to pay rent + mortgage till you can actually move, etc.

SPAT34

Thanks @SouthLondonUser I'll take a look