Treat Selling and Buying Separately....But Need Sale to Buy House

adzy77

Hi all, our house is on the market at the moment and we are still waiting for our perfect next home to come onto the market, whatever that may be. I’m worried that the selling and buying won’t fall into place at the same time and one may be waiting quite a long time for the other.

So i'm wondering if there is a way to separate the selling and buying part of the process and if its common?

Its not as clear cut in that we can afford to buy our new house without selling our current one – ultimately we do need to sell before we can purchase, however we do have the option of moving in with family temporarily should we need to.

I’m just not sure how it would work in real terms. Obviously if we were to sell and achieve completion before we even find our next home then it all falls into place and we then have the funds and are in a stronger position to buy.

However, lets say we accept an offer on ours, start the conveyancing process but then our dream home comes up a few weeks into the process which now means we need to link the sale in order to purchase it?

Is this a common approach? Is there even a name for it maybe?

Just trying to get my head around it before deciding if it’s a good idea and changing our sale to state no chain or if its not worth it

CSI_Yorkshire

adzy77 said:

However, lets say we accept an offer on ours, start the conveyancing process but then our dream home comes up a few weeks into the process which now means we need to link the sale in order to purchase it?

Why would you need to link the sale in that instance?  You could still sell, complete, and spend a few weeks somewhere temporary while your purchase completes.

Your choice is "do I want to be in a chain or don't I".  The same as most people.

I'd be annoyed if I agreed to buy your house with no chain and then part-way through you suddenly decided to start a chain.  I'd be pleasantly surprised if I agreed to buy with chain and you decided to break it.

ManuelG

I did as you suggest, started selling and agreed a sale price before we'd even found our home to buy, we then linked up later.

However...

We did let the buyer know we hadn't found anywhere, and checked before accepting their offer that they were happy to wait until we found somewhere to buy before proceeding. My buyer held off on surveys etc until the point that we found a house and had an offer accepted.

mashmash90

We just did exactly that! We completed on our sale, put everything in storage (the cost of which is offset by not paying a mortgage) and moved in with family. Now going through purchase process. Our sale already fell through once and new buyers were in rented and we didn't want it to fall through again due to chain issues. We were able to agree with our existing lender to split port the mortgage, they said as long as we buy within 6 months of selling, we can get our ERC refunded and keep our existing rate. We originally had a simultaneous sale/buy process and it was stressful. I feel like at least one weight has been lifted. Also if you are chain free, you are more desirable as a buyer than someone with a chain when making an offer to purchase.


"However, lets say we accept an offer on ours, start the conveyancing process but then our dream home comes up a few weeks into the process which now means we need to link the sale in order to purchase it?" - you can but you risk annoying the buyer and losing them. Fine if you find a chain free property but they might not be in a position to wait around for a long chain to complete. When we were buying another property it took 4 months just to get a complete chain as each party took 2-3 weeks to find their next place. That would risk the person first in the chain to have their mortgage expire.

CSI_Yorkshire

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/80095595/#Comment_80095595

For an example.

ManuelG

CSI_Yorkshire said:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/80095595/#Comment_80095595

For an example.

Yup, be straight when people is the advice! The irony being I thought we were the troublesome link for those very trains, but at least my buyers knew!

I hadn't considered until now that upwards was the same scenario, but you're quite right!

gazfocus

We agreed a sale on our house back in February and have only recently found a house to buy. We are keeping the two transactions separate. We’ve told our sellers that we need our sale to complete in order to pay for the new house but told our solicitor that we want completion of our sale asap and will then hold the funds to pay for the new house until that’s ready to complete so we will not create another link on the chain on our sale.