Almost 1 in 3 properties in St Neots are being sold without a chain…

Vendors are looking for buyers who are chain free, so should you rent in between moving homes so your offer is more attractive?

Moving home is said to be the third most stressful thing you can do, so if you can do anything to reduce that stress, so much the better!

When buying your next St Neots home, being chain-free can certainly make your life easier and offers many advantages over other buyers (and some disadvantages).

What is a chain?

A property chain is made when there is a line of home buyers and home sellers linked through their property transactions e.g. a St Neots first-time buyer purchases a property, the sellers of that property then buy another property, and those sellers then buy another property, so on and so forth.

Each home sale and purchase are reliant upon the success of every property in the so called ‘chain’. This means if there is just one hiccup on one of the properties, every sale and purchase along the whole chain would collapse. Everyone is on tenterhooks when there is a long chain involved!

Yet St Neots buyers who sell their home before searching for a new home considerably reduce their stress levels because they don’t need all the ducks in a row on the sale of their home in order to buy their new St Neots home.

Being chain-free puts St Neots home buyers in an enhanced position to negotiate with home sellers and they in turn may be more enthusiastic to accepting a lower offer.

Everyone is a chain-free buyer once … when they are a first-time buyer and if they are lucky enough to have an additional home to move into.

Sounds brilliant this chain-free life doesn’t it?

What if this isn’t your first home though? The only other option is to sell your St Neots property and move into rented accommodation, but that could end up costing quite a few thousands of pounds and can be perceived as wasting money, together with the added cost of employing the services of home removers twice!

However, that is what many St Neots homeowners are doing.

31.4% of all the properties on the market today in St Neots are being sold without a chain.

Moving home twice in a short period will be stressful and rent definitely can be perceived as ‘wasted money,’ but look at the bigger picture.

It is one of the sturdiest sellers’ markets in a generation, meaning if you sell your house now, you should get top dollar for your St Neots home, knowing that many buyers are keen to complete before the stamp duty holiday ends in the autumn.

But, by waiting for the return of stamp duty and for the full roll out of the immunisation programme to give more St Neots homeowners the peace of mind to place their home on to the property market, there will be more houses available, so house prices will cool and the number of properties for sale will increase.

Then you could pounce in and buy, with more St Neots homes to choose from and at more realistic asking prices.

So, does the type of St Neots property that is being sold make any difference?

• 22.5% of detached houses in St Neots are being sold chain-free
• 22.1% of semi-detached houses in St Neots are being sold chain-free
• 28.5% of town house/terraced Houses in St Neots are being sold chain-free
• 47.9% of apartments/flats in St Neots are being sold chain-free
• 47.1% of bungalows in St Neots are being sold chain-free

Of course, these aren’t all St Neots homeowners going into rented accommodation hoping to bag a bargain next year. Many of the bungalows are being sold because their homeowner has moved into sheltered accommodation or more flats are being sold as St Neots landlords sell their buy-to-let rental investments.

A word of caution.

There are also risks involved with this type of home buying strategy. Moving into rented accommodation means you are out of the St Neots property market. Property values could dip in the next 12 months… or they still could continue to rise - you are taking a gamble and it could go wrong.

Like most things in life, it however, it depends on your own personal circumstances, where you are in your life, your attitude to risk and your belief on what will (or won’t) happen to property values in St Neots in the next 12 to 18 months.

If you would like a chat about your potential choices for your home move, then drop us a line.