Before they ask:
Should you contact your buyer directly?
If your gut says you are being managed rather than informed, contact them. It is not rude, and there is almost nothing to lose. The real reason for a long delay is often something perfectly solvable that nobody thought to tell you.
- How long
- One conversation
- Typical cost
- Nil
- Who asks
- Nobody — this one is your call
A sale that was days from being pulled
Months in, the answer never changed: it’s with the solicitors, these things take time. No detail, no dates. The agent had never properly checked the buyer’s finances and, rather than admit it, kept offering reasons that didn’t add up.
We were days from pulling out and putting the house back on the market.
Then we contacted the buyer directly. Their parents were also taking out a mortgage as part of funding the purchase — real, legitimate, entirely solvable complexity that simply took longer than a single application. Nobody had thought to mention it. One conversation, and a sale that was about to collapse completed.
This is not unusual
The specifics vary. The pattern doesn’t.
- The delay has a real cause, and it is almost always mundane
- Your buyer assumes you have been told
- Your agent is managing you rather than informing you
- By the time the truth surfaces, someone has run out of patience and walked
Sellers abandon perfectly good sales over silence far more often than over genuine problems.
Follow your gut
If the answers have stopped being specific, that instinct is usually right. You are not obliged to communicate only through your agent, and a polite factual question to the person buying your house breaches nothing. There is almost nothing to lose: the worst outcome is that you learn the delay is real, which is still more than you knew before.
How to do it
- Be warm and specific. “I’m conscious we’re a while in and I’d rather understand than guess — is there anything holding things up at your end?”
- Ask for the cause, not a date. Dates get invented. Causes can be solved.
- Assume good faith. Your buyer wants this to complete as much as you do. They are not the obstacle.
- Tell your agent afterwards, matter-of-factly. Most will be fine.
- Pass anything useful to both solicitors, so it’s on the record and being acted on.
This is a conversation about what is actually happening, nothing more. You are not renegotiating and you are not agreeing anything — you are finding out whether the problem is solvable, which it usually is.
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Common questions
Is it legal to contact my buyer directly?
Yes. You are selling your house and they are buying it. Estate agency agreements govern your relationship with the agent, not your right to speak to another person. Nothing about a polite factual question breaches anything.
Will my agent mind?
Most will not, particularly if you tell them afterwards and keep it factual. An agent who reacts badly to you asking your buyer a straightforward question has told you something useful about why you were not getting answers in the first place.
What if I don't have their details?
Ask your agent to pass on a message, or ask your conveyancer to raise the question with the buyer's solicitor. Both are slower, but both work. In a chain, the person directly above or below you is often easier to reach than you expect.
What if they don't reply?
Then you have learned something too. A buyer who will not answer a friendly question months into a transaction is a different risk profile from one who replies within the hour, and that is worth knowing before you wait another month.
Last reviewed 14 September 2026. England and Wales.
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