At what point do we give up and pull out of the purchase?

Tiglet2

Swash said:

Guess what, we're still waiting 
Our first buyer, understandably, pulled out of the purchase because it was taking too long. We even offered to move out and break the chain but they had made up their minds. The house we are purchasing was ready 4 days later! We found a second buyer and are now waiting for them to catch up. So far it has been 8.5 months. 

Since our first buyer pulled out, I took a huge step back from the process and just let it tick along in the background. I now feel indifferent. I still want to move and still love the house, but the stress that solicitors and estate agents have caused us hardly seems worth it.

Hopefully it will all be forgotten when we complete. But it has been a huge learning curve and next time I will do anything I can to not be involved in a chain.

So sorry to hear this, but to be fair your problem was nothing to do with being in a chain.  There was a problem with the title, so that delay is why your first buyer pulled out.  Had that not been an issue, you would have completed by now.  Unfortunately, when looking to purchase a property, it is impossible to know whether there will be legal issues in advance of the conveyancing process.  This was partly why the HIPs were introduced some years ago, so you could view the title documents before making an offer, but sadly it was discontinued only a year or two later.

Swash

That is true @Tiglet2 but if the buyer would have said they were thinking of pulling out and asked us to break the chain earlier, we would have done. Then we could have stayed with family while the purchase caught up, especially now knowing it was only 4 days later. I'm hoping this time it all goes through, I suppose we will find out in the next few weeks. Thanks for your reply.