Breaking the House Purchase Chain

[XJ75]

We are currently trying to move house, the chain is quite small as follows:

Investor -> Buyer of our place -> Us -> Place we are buying (which is probate)

The investor is a cash buyer, the buyer of our place is a cash buyer, we aren't cash buyers but our mortgage is fully approved and in place. All the searches and paperwork at each stage of the chain are complete and ready to go, with the exception of not having the probate granted yet.

Just been told that there's an issue with the probate of the place we are buying, something about having to amend the will. They have absolutely no idea how long it will take to sort (couldn't even say weeks or months). They are asking us if we would consider moving out so that we can complete on our sale. We have a BTL locally which we could have moved into, but I've recently renewed the tenancy on that so it's no longer an option. My mother lives fairly local but her house is small so it's far from ideal to move in with her. On top of that, we are facing paying for the removal costs twice, paying for putting our stuff in storage, plus my commute will be much longer and expensive (I use the train) if we stayed with my mother.

I'm tempted to suggest that our buyers temporarily move out instead, but I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable. We don't want to lose our buyers as they paid a price that we are very happy with.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

[XJ75]

boyse7en said:

Asking the occupiers of the house you are looking to buy to move out doesn't help. You won't be able to move in until you have bought it, which you can't do until probate has been completed.

Sorry I meant ask the buyers of our house to move out so that the investor at their end of the chain can complete (I believe it's the investor that is getting impatient).

[XJ75]

KrazyIvan said:

Why would you get involved in that end of the deal?

Imagine they move out into a rented property, the deal for the house your buying falls through, and you cant move now for some time while you search for a new house, your previous buyer is now stuck and losing money and your being blamed, the only winner would be the investor.

If the investor is getting impatient, other then pass the pressure on down the line hoping it can move it forward a little quicker, there really isn't much you can do.

Only because that's the end the pressure is coming from. We are in no hurry to move, so why should we take the risk of moving out? It's not really fair on them to expect them to move out, but equally I don't think it's fair on us to move out either.

[XJ75]

On a separate note, if we do move out, is it unreasonable to ask for some compensation to cover additional removal costs, storage costs and rent (possibly ~6 months of rent)?

[XJ75]

kambites said:

Compensation from whom? It all depends on who's most desperate to close the deal.

I suppose another way to put it is to reverse the question, how much would you be willing to pay your buyers to move into rented accommodation?

I guess from either the investor or the buyer of our place. Basically I don't want to end up out of pocket just because someone is in a hurry. But on the flip side I don't want the whole lot to collapse, it's a delicate balancing act!

[XJ75]

We've now had 2 suggestions from the estate agent:

1. Exchange contracts on the sale of our place but don't complete until the probate is granted on the house we are buying
2. Exchange and complete and on the sale of our place and rent the new place under some kind of license agreement until we can exchange/complete

I'm leaning towards option 1, but presumably that means exchanging contracts without a completion date, which isn't ideal.

[XJ75]

It sounds like they would. I called the estate agent back to get clarity. Option 1 actually involves a "longstop completion", which is where we would agree a completion date quite far ahead (~3 months).

Worst case is that after 3 months, we could move into my mother's place.