Selling to FTB. Interested in your timeline as a buyer / seller with no chain

Lisa2211

Hi all, recent lurker who is enjoying reading the waiting to exchange thread. 

Our situation.. We have accepted an offer on our house from FTB’s but we haven’t found our onward purchase yet. We are happy to proceed and move in with family as we find we are losing out to more ‘ proceedable ‘ buyers so hopefully this will help our cause. (Although moving twice with a young family is not something I’m looking forward too lol) 

We have returned the information to the solicitor last week including our ID,  guarantees, fixtures form etc and the buyers surveyor/valuer attended yesterday.

What happens next in the process? Do I need to check in with conveyancer at all or is it just wait and see. I hate not knowing what’s going on lol

Would anyone kindly share their timeline from offer to completion to satisfy my curious mind 😂

Snookie12cat

How long is a piece of string. Sold my one house recently in 5 weeks but am currently selling my other house and we are 3 months in on no chain and buyer is waiting for mortgage still, maybe we will complete soon 🤷‍♀️🤞

maisie_cat

Every chain is different, we sold to people staying with family and bought a probate property but it still took 6 months for 2 houses.
Much of the delay was the buyers mortgage because the husband was self employed.

newsgroupmonkey_

As FTB we bought from someone with supposedly no chain.

We were told they would only accept our offer if we completed in 8 weeks. We were very happy with that.

Still took 16 weeks. No idea why, but every time we asked, we were told that the vendor was waiting for something or another. Then we got a call a week before Christmas saying that they wanted to exchange and complete ASAP to which we said "January 2nd". That date came and went and was another 2 weeks before we finally completed. Absolutely no idea why either.

The property was put up under market value and even then, we took another chunk off. I bet if the vendor had known, he would have put it up for full market value. Bizarre.

Oh and Zoopla nonsense... because it sold cheap, they now seem to think it's worth £20k less than the house next door which doesn't have a drive, smaller garden and is in worse condition.

Thrugelmir

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

Then we got a call a week before Christmas saying that they wanted to exchange and complete ASAP to which we said "January 2nd". That date came and went and was another 2 weeks before we finally completed. Absolutely no idea why either.

Offices close down for the Xmas holidays. Not enough working days to arrange everything either. 

newsgroupmonkey_

Thrugelmir said:

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

Then we got a call a week before Christmas saying that they wanted to exchange and complete ASAP to which we said "January 2nd". That date came and went and was another 2 weeks before we finally completed. Absolutely no idea why either.

Offices close down for the Xmas holidays. Not enough working days to arrange everything either. 

Fair point. All dates were suggested by the vendors solicitors (including the 2nd). My solicitor was ready to go - all the searches had come back in the October.

Lisa2211

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply and share your experience.  I do find it interesting hearing everyone’s stories. 

About five years ago I sold a leasehold property and that took around 5 months from offer to completion but I was so stressed as my first buyer pulled out the day before exchange so I think I’ve blocked that memory out! 

Rosa_Damascena

If the money's in place and the searches and survey comes back fine and there are no major holidays, it should be fast - under 12 weeks. If you have a lazy / busy conveyancer it could take ages!

Gavin83

I was a FTB recently and ours took around 4 months from start to finish. However most of that was waiting on our vendor and those further up the chain, we were ready after about 6 weeks. Our mortgage application took 2 days to come back.

Every chain is different.

Lumiona

Every chain is different, very true. 

Also, things change beyond your control.
 
We sold our house in 10 weeks. We were proactive sellers and returned all queries and paperwork straight away.

The house we are buying we are currently 18 weeks into it. Only 2 houses in the chain, no idea what the delay is. So frustrating.

Nichelette

5.5 months. We were moving from rented into a house that has been rented out so no chain. Vendors solicitor was horrendous.