What is A Property Chain?

Apart from being gazumped, long property chains are the main thing house buyers complain about. Long property chains cause problems for both the buyer and the seller, because they delay home moves. This is because the solicitors, mortgage lenders and estate agents move paperwork between all the different parties. If a chain breaks, which can be because one of the buyers or sellers drops out, it leaves everyone else back at square one.

Although there are no exact statistics, estate agent and solicitors estimate a typical property chain involves four or five homes, but a chain with as many as a 10 or 12 properties can happen. Chains tend to be longer when the property market is not moving as fast, as the sellers take longer to find a buyer. The chain builds up over a longer period of time, and the longer the chain, the greater delays on all the transactions.