Broken House Chain - Options

Blue1968

Looking for advice if possible please.  We are in the process of moving house for the first time and the sale of our existing home and purchase of new one was agreed and due to complete within the next three weeks.  However, our buyers have suddenly pulled out for unspecified reasons.  We have put our house back on the market and our prospective buy is going on the market this weeks.  We are anxious not to lose the new house, but we dont want to let our hearts rule the head. 

To help outline matters, our house sale was agreed for 260K and the new house sale price was 460K.  We are mortgage free and are using our life savings to pay the balance, but have had to take out a 20K personal loan to cover the excess and stamp duty costs.  Obviously we need to the 260K we are missing from the house sale 

I have been advised a bridging loan/mortage is a possibility but the costs seem excessive upon first viweings.  Would I be able to remortgage our existing home whilst it is up for sale and pay it off immediately post-sale.  Are there any other options avaialble or would we be better being patient and waiting for our house sale to go through however long it takes.   I havent spoken to a financial advisor as yet but was hoping for some informal help before we proceeed.  Many thanks

silvercar

I would think a 280k mortgage on the new place would be easier to get as the loan to value would be lower than taking a mortgage on the old place. You would then clear it when the old place is sold. Just make sure you get one with no redemption penalties.

housebuyer143

Agree with poster above, assuming you can get enough then a mortgage on the new place is the way to go. Pay it off once the house is sold. 
Don't forget to take into account potentially CT, utility standing charges etc and insurance for the old place while it's empty. It all adds up. 

Bigphil1474

OP, you may struggle to get a mortgage with no early repayment charges, might be the one time I'd suggest a broker. Bridging loans are very expensive and best avoided unless you are absolutely desperate. I agree with above, a mortgage might be the way forward, or wait until yours is sold again. I wouldn't get a loan and mortgage.

Personally, I'd expect your vendor to be patient at this time of year as sales are slow, even if they gave up on you and went back on the market, they are not likely to sell any quicker. Might be worth pursuing as to why your buyer pulled out. Ask your EA if they can ask - if it's to do with your house, then you are best knowing. If it's unrelated to your property, then that's fine, but any future buyers would probably ask anyway. We were actually the third buyer for the house we just bought - the first pulled out for unspecified reasons, the second one died the week before exchange. Explained why the house kept coming on and off the market as we'd been tracking it for 6 months.

Albermarle

I do not think you need a financial advisor, they are more geared towards investments, pensions etc.
As suggested a mortgage broker could be more useful.

Blue1968

Thank you all very much for your advices, its much appreciated

ReadingTim

What makes you think you'd lose the new house?  Is there an onward chain above that?  By all means explore your options, but other than remarketing your current house, I wouldn't appear too keen to break the chain yourself unless absolutely necessary, for the reasons you outline.  Obviously your buyer would want you to do that, but if you don't, they'd have to remarket their place, setting them back some time, so as long as you can find another buyer within a reasonable timeframe, they might be better off sticking with you rather than starting again.... 

Blue1968

There is an onward chain and the house our sellers had agreed to buy is now back on the market.  I am not sure we will lose the house but I suppose that is just the initial instinct after agreeing the purchase over 3 months ago and assuming everything was in place.  As I said this is our first and hopefully last move, we have been in our existing house for over 25 years and I've felt a little naive about he whole process tbh.  Thank you all again for your comments, it seems patience may be the key here initially.  

CherryK87

Also jumping on this thread as our seller has just pulled out of their onward purchase. They do still want to sell but now need to find another property. We were happily moving along in the small chain, as we have first time buyers buying our property, however the seller has now decided after a month and a half that they don't like the area of the no chain property they were going to buy so have pulled out. Initially they were going to buy a new build in a different area and then pulled out of that and now they have pulled out of this one too, I am not sure how serious they really are. Not sure if we will lose our buyer if they think it might be a long wait, but we will just have to wait and see. We really like the house and we aren't in a major rush to move ourselves, but don't want to be strung along by the seller. Have been keeping an eye out for other properties, especially no chain properties, but just nothing is comparable. Just a waiting game now and it could all be taken out of our hands anyway. The joys of being in the middle of a chain! 🙄