Buying and Selling a House at the Same Time in Maidenhead

Most chains hold. This page is about what happens when they do not.

If your buyer withdraws before exchange

Nothing binds either of you before exchange, so your buyer can withdraw without penalty and so can you. Your position depends on whether you have exchanged on your purchase.

If you have not, you have lost time and the money spent on searches, and you remarket. If you have exchanged on the purchase, you are contractually obliged to complete on it without the proceeds of your sale. Your contract sets out what follows if you cannot, and we will take you through those terms before you exchange rather than after.

This is why we do not exchange on your purchase until your sale is ready to exchange at the same time. If anyone is pressing you to exchange on one side first, that is the pressure to resist.

If the two ends of the chain want different completion dates

Every party in the chain has to agree a single date, and each has a constraint: a tenancy ending, a school term, a mortgage offer expiring, a seller waiting on a new build.

We negotiate the date through the chain but we do not control it. Where dates cannot be reconciled, the routes are short-term bridging finance, temporary accommodation with belongings stored, or in some cases completing and delaying occupation by agreement. The last needs care and is not always available.

If your sale is leasehold and the management pack does not arrive

Your buyer's solicitor cannot advise them to exchange without it. You cannot produce it, because the landlord or managing agent does. Their fee for producing it typically falls between £120 and £500 and their turnaround is theirs, not ours.

Order it the day you accept an offer, not when the buyer's solicitor asks. If it has not arrived after a fortnight, chase in writing and copy the freeholder.

If your buyer's lender down-values

The lender instructs a surveyor who reports the property is worth less than the agreed price. The lender then lends against the lower figure, leaving your buyer short.

Your buyer has three options: find the difference in cash, challenge the valuation with comparable evidence, or ask you to reduce. You are not obliged to reduce. What matters is whether the valuation is defensible against recent completed sales of genuinely comparable property, and on flats a difference in lease length can make two apparently similar properties not comparable at all.

If you reduce, your own purchase may need renegotiating and the whole chain has to re-agree.

If a search result unsettles your buyer

A search result does not stop a sale. It stops a buyer who has not been told about it.

What resolves it is evidence. Where flood risk is flagged, that means your own insurance history, your premium, and whether you have ever claimed. Gather it when you accept an offer rather than waiting for the question to arrive cold.

Where a buyer's lender raises it, the lender will usually want confirmation that buildings insurance is available at normal terms.

If you cannot complete both on the same day

Simultaneous completion needs the sale money to arrive before the purchase money goes out, on the same day, through the banking system. Where sale funds arrive too late in the afternoon, completion on the purchase can fail through no fault of anyone in the chain.

We manage this by completing early in the day, and by being cautious about Friday completion dates on a long chain, because a Friday failure leaves everyone without a resolution until Monday.

For the stage-by-stage sequence of a purchase rather than its failure modes, our conveyancing team in Maidenhead page links through to it.

Speak to us today

Fixed Fee conveyancing, a named solicitor, 20+ Years Experience. SRA regulated and CQS Accredited.