The key to dealing with a property chain without tearing your hair out
We all know that moving house can be stressful.
And as you progress through the various stages of the process, each part brings new challenges.
We all know that moving house can be stressful.
And as you progress through the various stages of the process, each part brings new challenges.
Initially, you have valuations and must consider the price and agent you wish to use.
Then you have the marketing. Preparing your home for the photographer, buying flowers and staging things to look just right.
When the property finally goes on the market, you have viewings. A stream of potential buyers coming into your home and deciding if they like it enough to live there. Appointment, after appointment, means you must keep the home spick and span at all times.
It's fair to say that the main focus here is to get a buyer. And once those offers come in and you select the lucky winner, you can breathe a sigh of relief that the hard work is done.
And it is, to a degree. Your involvement will reduce now, and the only visitors to your home will be the buyer and their surveyor.
But, arguably, the process has only just begun. Property sellers often say that most of the stress of moving came AFTER the offer has been accepted.
Why? What makes this part of the process so stressful?
It's because things have just gotten real. Before you were marketing your home, hoping to appeal to a buyer. But now, you have a buyer, and the clock is counting down the days until you will actually move. This is the part of the process with the highest stakes, and you have limited control over it.
You don't know when you're moving, as a completion date can't be set, but you know that you will be moving at some point.
And the fate of your home move, and the timescale that it will happen, are firmly out of your control. You won't be able to do anything about it, and you won't even be able to get updates from all of the parties involved. You're at the mercy of many other moving parts within the system, and there's not much you can do about it.
This lack of control and inability to get a full and complete update increases the blood pressure in even the calmest of sellers.
When there's an entire chain of people all at different stages of the process, it's tricky to keep the top of the chain informed of what the bottom of the chain is doing and vice versa.
To fully understand these challenges, we must first know what is meant by 'property chain'.
In property terms, a chain is the related parties buying or selling properties to each other.
Often, as we get older, we upgrade our homes. With each move, we buy something a bit bigger or more expensive. Eventually, when our children have all left home and we are nearing retirement, we downsize to something more manageable.
So a first-time buyer might be buying a 2-bed flat, and the seller of that flat is purchasing a small house. The home seller is buying a 3-bed house, and the seller of the 3-bed house is buying a 4-bed detached property. The seller of the 4-bed detached property has decided to move out to the country to a lovely big 5-bedroomed home. The seller of that 5 bedroomed home is looking to downsize to a bungalow. The bungalow is vacant, so this becomes the end of the chain.
Generally speaking, this is a typical chain of property sales, made up of the various stages of life that often prompt a move.
All parties are inextricably linked together but will only know the buyer of their property and the seller of the property they're buying. The retired bungalow owners will not know the first-time buyers at the bottom of the chain.
Your estate agent will fill in the gaps or links in the chain, so they have a complete picture of the parties involved. They'll follow your buyer and their buyer, like a treasure hunt, until they eventually get to the buyer that isn't selling a property. And then, they will follow the links above you until they get to a seller who is not buying another property. And then they have a completed chain.
They will gather the names and addresses of the buyer or seller and details of their estate agents and solicitors. Then there will be a timeline of the status of every person involved in the chain, all linked together.
Some agents highlight that a property is to be sold without any onward chain. This simply means that the seller will not buy another property when selling this one, so that particular property would be the end of the chain.
How do you hold them together?
Communication: Realistically, each party can only get updates from the persons immediately above or below them in the chain. So you can see how difficult it is to understand where everyone is in the process. Much like Chinese whispers, things can soon get misconstrued.
Also, they must all be coordinated for the sales to complete. Everyone moves on the same day, meaning that all parties must be able to get time off work, assistance with moving and/or childcare, removal companies to move their belongings, finances in place, and a solicitor available to handle the transaction on that day.
Coordinating a chain of multiple properties is a highly stressful balancing act of many moving parts. There is a high potential for things to go wrong. And the stress levels are heightened further if an issue arises whilst your removal company is parked on your driveway!
It can feel like a military operation coordinating a sale with a long chain. The majority are only 3 or 4 properties. Still, sometimes they can go up to 9 or even 10 properties, all linked together and reliant on each other to enable the sale to go through.
The key is knowing that your agent has your back and they're working with you and your solicitor to get you moved.
Don't be intimidated by the legal process and complicated sales chains; just get a good team of professionals around you.
If you have questions about property chains or are currently trying to move house in one, contact our experts today. They are very experienced in handling complicated sale chains and will undoubtedly be able to help you.