to think I can buy a house before selling ours?

[slipperandpjsmum]

We have been thinking of moving for a couple of years but not done anything about it. There is a house that I have always loved, would be perfect for us. It has so much potential. Its on an enormous plot and has never been extended. Its very run down. It came on the market this week!! But of course our house is not even on the market, let alone sold. Its for sale for around the same price as ours would go for.

We also have another property which we rent out.

aibu to think there could be any way on this earth we could manage to do this????

YABU asking on AIBU. Surely it depends on how much money you have etc. Ask a mortgage advisor.

Can't think of a way for you to do this, but if someone else comes up with one I'd be interested to know how too!

Ask the estate agent if the seller would be willing to swap their house for yours.

Honey yes I thought of that one but they are moving to America.

Of course it can be done you can get a bridging loan, it is what you get when you want a property now, but still have one to sell.

Have you got a 20% deposit? Can you afford to pay 12% interest on a bridging loan until your own house sells?

In the current housing market I think it's madness to try and buy before you've sold.

They might accept a monthly retainer to keep it off the market until yours has sold. I know somebody who has done this but don't know how much they paid.

Fabby, my sister used a bridging loan once, for one month, because of a mismatch in when her buyers could complete and when the sellers of her new home insisted on her completing. Banks were never keen to bridge for more than three months; and in these circumstances, with the OP's house not even on the market, I doubt any bank would consider lending bridging finance at all.

Of course it can be done, banks regularly provide bridging loans for these purposes.

We did it once and it is not for the faint hearted!

You could convert your current mortgage to a Buy-to-Let mortgage, giving you enough to buy the new house on a residential mortgage. BUT you would have to let out your current house and not just do this for convenience.

You really need to find an Independant Financial Advisor - try Unbiased.co.uk

We did it using an ordinary mortgage rather than a bridging loan which would have been horrendously expensive. We were lucky enough to have a deposit for the second property which probably helped but we just chose one that had no limit on when you can repay. Lots of them you had to pay a big exit fee or you were only allowed to overpay 10% a year but the rate is good so that's fine if you are using it to buy a property and stay in it and then move onto your next property.

But lower down the best buy tables there were some where the rate was higher but you could redeem them with no penalty. We knew we were going to be split between the two places for about 6 months; and paying 4% rather than 12% and a £500 set up fee/£99 redemption cost rather than a £3k set up fee for the bridging loan
made it significantly cheaper!

We had a nice ifa and explained our plan and he helped us get a good rate on the right mortgage even though he was probably upset at not getting the much bigger commission he'd of got from the bridging loan!

Why don't you just put your house on the market quickly now? We've just done exactly this, we started looking before we'd even got a valuation on ours, looked for about 6 months, found something we loved, put an offer in which was accepted and then put ours on the market. It all worked out fine and we are due to exchange on Monday, it was no problem at all. In fact we did our last move the same way too.

if you can accept 5-10% less than market value for your house you will get quick sale and can do it, you could also put your property to auction but you will have to give vacant possesion within 28 days but you will definitely have money not every property at auction goes for peanuts and you can set reserve. just make sure you make viewing easy as normally catalogue only 2 weeks before sale and if get sensible offer can sell on auction terms prior to auction

do what top agents like savills strutt and parker do and insist your buyers pay 10% deposit within 10 days and complete in 12 weeks and let them know if they can not complete quickly the deal is off; when we bought this house we had to sign contracts( in scotland so law different) with 4 weeks and complete in 10 weeks we actually got it for less than top bidder as they rapidly found out he could not complete in time

How much equity do you have in your two houses? You could re-mortgage one/both of those, would you have enough cash then?

we have seen a house we want to buy but would never offer on it without an offer on ours. As a consequence we have put our house up for sale slightly earlier than planned and just hope it might sell.

Good Luck.

Bridging loans are hard to come by right now due to economics so you really need to speak to an IFA and see what is feasible. Also in some areas property isn't selling well so again it depends on location etc.