How on earth does a chain ever work?

[Deleted User]

Being a weird IT fella I just cant see how it would ever work?

Surely, you could be waiting for 10 people before you and 10 people after you (or more) to be ready to complete? And nothing going wrong.....

Surely the system is totally reliant on someone before or after breaking the chain?

I can see the appeal in selling your house and renting to be honest.

loubel

Chains don't tend to get that long in reality. But yes, you have to wait until all people in the chain are ready to exchange and agree a completion date and if anyone's matter falls through that impacts the whole chain.

Elliott.T123

That is the exact reason why house buying/selling is such a stressful process.

As Loubel said, generally chains are much much smaller than 20 transactions. A quick google shows there is no true data on this but that estate agents estimated the average to be about 4-6.

Even if you sell and rent you still only ensure you are the bottom of the chain, no guarantee how big the chain gets after you.

elsien

You now have three separate threads open asking various questions about the process of selling up and moving on. Which is not particularly helpful.
Please can I suggest that you asked to have them merged and have all your questions in one place – it’s going to get a bit repetitive otherwise. 

Albermarle

elsien said:

You now have three separate threads open asking various questions about the process of selling up and moving on. Which is not particularly helpful.
Please can I suggest that you asked to have them merged and have all your questions in one place – it’s going to get a bit repetitive otherwise. 

I agree, just one thread is enough.

Flugelhorn

agree @[Deleted User] needs to have one thread 

chains are reliant on someone not needing a house at all, ie emigration, death, cohabiting, care home or just selling a spare house - that stops it 

EssexHebridean

Our chain was 1) our buyer, 2) us, 3) our sellers and 4) their sellers. Relatively short, and our buyer was an investor/the top was a probate sale. Even that was stressful enough thanks to an incompetent conveyancer below us.

BungalowBel

Our buyer is a FTB and there is no chain above us, so just us and our buyer.  Even so, the house was sold STC on 19th March and our solicitor has still not heard from the buyer's solicitors, nor does he expect to for another couple of weeks.  I have heard conveyancing can take six months for a leasehold.

FlyMeSomewhere79

Sometimes chains need to be controlled a bit, I recently sold my house to first time buyers that were sat in rented accommodation, the house I bought had a guy and his family in that consistently failed to find a house they liked, the requirements he set himself were just too strict to open our his options.

Anyway as the months passed and completion neared we were not willing to risk our sale waiting for him to finally find a place he liked and waiting his knows how many months for whatever chain he joins to complete. Upshot is they moved into rented and broke the chain to allow us all.to complete.

Soot2006

We too pulled out of a purchase because we quickly found out the sellers were extremely picky about their own purchase. It was a good call, as that was in 2019 and that house is still owned and occupied by the same people. We would have been waiting a long time.  I found the chain of 5 super stressful, but got lucky when it was revealed mid summer that everyone in the chain was dependent on the school term/academic year for either children or employment, and suddenly everyone worked together to get everything completed before September. Phew.

Bigphil1474

We were in a chain of 3 properties/4 buyers, but the FTB buying ours pulled out after their survey (which was a terrible survey with 'issues' that could have been sorted by speaking to their solicitor), so the thing has completely collapsed as the people we were buying from can't wait. I've lived in this house for over 20 years and it was the first house we bought, I may well just stay here until I die.