About eight years ago we purchased a home in a Dublin commuter town. We always had the intention of coming back to Dublin and now think we may be about ready financially to make the move. When we purchased our current home we were renting so we don’t really know much about the process for selling a home and buying another. What do you recommend to make this process as smooth as possible?
One of the trickiest transactions to manage in today’s property market is a “chain” sale; where the purchase/sale of one property is dependent on another. It looks straightforward; you get a valuation on your own house first, look around for something suitable in your price range/area, put down a deposit and then sell your own. Or a variation of that theme. The reality can be somewhat different though.
If you look at it from the perspective of the buyer or seller, both need certainty. A buyer needs to know that if their offer is accepted, they can get the house within a reasonable time frame, and a seller needs to know their buyer can pay and move as soon as possible.
My recommendation is to sell your own house first, then look for short-term alternative accommodation while you’re looking for your new house, and when the opportunity arises to buy the house you want comes up, you’re cashed up and ready to act at short notice.
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There are several risks; if the market races ahead after you’ve sold you may not be able to afford your location or property type of choice, or your job or health status may change in the meantime. Securing alternative short-term accommodation may also present difficulties. But if you don’t have the cash to hand to buy your new home, you’ll be stuck.
Exceptions can crop up, but they are rare. If you’re looking at a new build, depending on the phasing of the development, there may be sufficient time to have your own current home sold and be ready to buy and move in straight away. In the case of second-hand homes, very occasionally you might come across a vendor or purchaser who is willing to wait for you to sell your current home, but as I’ve said already, they are rare exceptions.
My professional organisation, the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI), together with the Law Society recently published Speed up your property sale – guide to avoiding the most common delays This guide is aimed at anyone considering the sale of their home and helps to identify and hopefully guard against potential delays in selling a property.
Selling or buying isn’t necessarily straightforward or quick. While parts of the process have now been digitised, much of it remains paper-based, with a heavy reliance on third parties. The guide identifies numerous parties involved in the selling and buying of a property from those one would expect such as estate agents, banks, solicitors and chartered building surveyors, to other less obvious parties such as local authorities, the Revenue Commissioners, Uisce Eireann and the Land Registry
Many or all of these parties may need to be contacted which means a lot of chasing and following up will need to be done by both the seller and the buyer to complete a transaction. Even one small error at any stage comes with the potential to collapse the entire process.
The best advice I can offer is that you focus on getting your own house sale in order before considering your next move. Here is what you need to do and consider right now:
- Contact your solicitor to get the deeds from your bank.
- Have you carried out any alterations to the property since you purchased it that might require planning or building regulation approval?
- Double check the folio map to make sure the boundaries are correct. Even though everything was in order when you bought, that might not be the case now.
- Get your house prepped for sale – clean, clean and clean again, inside and out.
- Have your property valued and don’t necessarily go for the highest valuation or the lowest fees – competition between estate agents is fierce and some agents will over value and undercut on fees just to get the listing on their books.
- Mortgages don’t transfer to your new home. Your existing mortgage will need to be paid off and you will need to take out a new loan for the new property. You will need new loan approval and life assurance.
Notwithstanding the risk it involves, the prospects available once you’ve sold your existing home first far outweigh the effort and potential missed opportunities associated with trying to manage the “chain” process I referred to at the outset of my response to you. Buyers need to be motivated and ready to act quickly in the current market. Selling your own home now with a view to having cash on hand to execute a future purchase without delay is a clear demonstration of that motivation.
Ed Carey is an estate agent and a member of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland
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