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A broken chain can put a spanner in several months of hard work. Our latest research shows that the average sale is now taking approximately eight and a half months so for all of this time and energy to be wasted would be nothing short of devastating. However, all is not lost.
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Is your buyer likely to pull out?
No one knows what is going through the head of someone else. However, when a major life even like buying a house is just round the corner, having an idea would be useful.This situation happens more often than you would expect - in fact, in an average year, one in four chains break at any stage of the process. If your buyer has pulled out or you believe they are likely to, you may want to read on and see how Spring can help.As we mentioned, a property chain break is very common but this doesn’t make it any less irritating when it happens. While it may be difficult to avoid it happening entirely, there are a number of signs that may hint at your buyer pulling out, giving you an opportunity to prepare and manage the situation calmly.
Patience
Just as a general rule, you should be patient with the entire process and not be overzealous. Until you have successfully exchanged keys and are living in the property, hold off on celebrating as your buyer (or even the person you are buying from) could pull out of the exchange at any moment.
Breakdown in communication
This will be your most obvious sign that things are going south. If you begin to hear from your buyer or vendor less and less frequently, this may be a sign that they could pull out in the very near future. One of the main aspects of our home buying process is that we pride ourselves on a total transparency and our dedicated property advisors ensure regular dialogue with our customers, keeping them up to date every step of the way. If you feel that communication is drying up with your buyer or vendor, you can contact your estate agent to get in touch with them in order to gauge whether or not they are still invested in the exchange. Both parties will want the sale to go through so maintaining a steady line of communication is crucial to keeping the process as smooth as possible. Any breakdown or pause in communication is only going to delay the sale; getting conversation moving again is hugely important.
Milestones
Although the average sale now takes around eight and a half months, there is still a natural progression of events that occur - albeit at a slightly different rate than normal. When buying a house, you need to contact solicitors, meet with mortgage advisors, conveyancers... If these milestones are not being met at a regular rate, there is a high probability that your buyer or vendor may be on the verge of pulling out or, if not pulling out, they are on course to complete at a totally different rate to you and you may find yourself waiting around for a long while.
Re-negotiation
If your buyer wants to renegotiate their original bid, this is an indication that their financial situation may have changed, issues were found in their home survey or there is someone else who has done the same elsewhere on the chain.Having a buyer re-negotiating their offer late on in the process can put you in a difficult position - everyone wants the sale to go through, as such you might feel obliged to accept the lower offer to keep things ticking.Any change in offers, time frames or communication should be considered as a warning sign that your buyer or vendor may be on the verge of pulling out and you should - as a worst case scenario - prepare for this.
Managing A Buyer Pulling Out
The most important thing to remember if your buyer has pulled out is to not worry. As we have mentioned before, this is incredibly common and there are always ways to deal with it. The sooner this happens the better, however even in the very latter stages of the process, it is not the end of the world.
Talk to your estate agent
Your estate agent will most likely be the people to break the bad news to you but you should use that opportunity to talk to them about what your next move could be.Finding out why your buyer has pulled out could be very beneficial. If it is perhaps a matter of money - and you have the means to - you are well within your right to lower your asking price in order to get them back involved. Some buyers may not give this information, however if you can find out why the chain has broken, you may be able to avoid this happening again in the future.
Weigh Up Your Options
Following from our point about the asking price potentially being higher than anticipated, we would recommend getting another valuation on your property to ensure you are selling it for the most reasonable and fair price. To find out about Spring’s free home valuation offer, click here.
Starting again
As frustrating and stressful as it might be, often the only solution to a buyer pulling out of a home sale is to simply start all over again. This does not necessarily mean that you will need to go through another average of eight and a half months of waiting and hoping - if anything this time could be much shorter as you will understand the warning signs and be better prepared should this happen again.
For many home sales, the purchase of one property is made off the back of the sale of another. In other words, you need your house to be sold before you can buy your next home. If this is the case and you risk losing your dream home as a result of your buyer pulling out, Spring can offer you a solution. We have been in the industry of buying homes since 2007 and our reputation as one of Britain’s leading home buyers is supported by an ever growing list of satisfied customers. You can also check out our Trustpilot page where we are rated Excellent.If you sell your house fast with Spring, you are given a free, no obligation valuation based off of a remote review by two of our Property Buyers, local estate agents as well as a surveyor from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors to ensure the most fair and accurate valuation possible.
Spring provides a guaranteed sale with the proceeds in your account in as little as seven days and with our Spring Price Promise, we ensure that if we then sell your property for a higher price within six months, we will give you the difference. Our team of property buying experts are all on hand from the moment you contact us.This allows you the opportunity to focus on buying your next home without having to worry about your own buyer pulling out and your chain breaking down.Sell the Spring way and make your next move with speed, ease and certainty.
RECEIVE AN OFFER ON YOUR HOME
After we receive your details, one of our Property Advisors will call you within 24 hours to confirm details about your home and to explain our process if you choose to proceed. For more about selling your home to Spring view our FAQS
