Bridging loan or ?

[MoominGang]

We're moving, completely changing the are so no commuting possible. We have found a house we like and would like to put offer on but our house is not sold yet and it doesn't seem likely to happen soon.
No mortgage on the current house, so we're really lucky that way but as the start of school year looms we're keen to move.
Spoke to the bank today and they claim we would no be able to secure mortgage on the new property and suggested bridging loans. Now after googling they sound scary and I'm not sure we want the risk.
What else could we do? Anyone has been through this and has any advice please.

Why isn't your house selling, houses are supposed to be selling very fast right now, what does your estate agent say about yours not selling? Is your asking price realistic?

Alternatives would be to take out a BTL mortgage on your existing property, rent it out to cover the mortgage and use the released equity to pay for/deposit on your new home. Or rent out your own home and rent another one where you're moving to as owning two properties attracts extra stamp duty.

So we were told but looking around it’s not necessary the case in the neighbourhood. We’re in Scotland so have no power over the asking price. It’s what the home report comes at. Had a lot of interest initially and some really low offers. We’re unwilling to sell and happy to wait a bit longer. But it means we’ll loose out on the house we really liked.
We don’t mind the extra stamp duty as that can be reimbursed later but the bridging loan is not what we’re would want.
Rental it might have to be…

You can set the asking price for whatever you want in Scotland,regardless of Home report value
Bridging loans are not to be recommended
And are very difficult to get

Could you re-mortgage your current home (that way releasing money to buy your new one) then sell your current home when you are ready to do so? Provided you don’t take a product with early redemption penalties that worked for us. We were also relocating, we out an interest only mortgage on our old home, bought new one and then sold the old place and settled they mortgage.

Of course you have power over the asking price! What you mean is you don't want to sell for less than the home report.

What I mean is none of the EA we spoke to would put on the market with a price other than the home report. Neither of the houses were looking to buy had a price different than what home report comes at. It I might have been getting it wrong all along.
Thank @elfofftheshelf that might be the way to go if nothing else is possible.

But I'd that the offers over price or do they sometimes use fixed prices in Scotland?

Fixed price is extremely rare and I'm not sure what the rules are then.
The point on my question was, how to go about buying a new house before selling the old one.

Not especially uncommon for property in Scotland to go on at a fixed price
Very unusual for property to go on a Home report value,asking price normally below Home report value to encourage interest

Sounds like the issue is that you need the money tied up in your current property to buy the new house
The standard thing to do would be to offer subject to sale and then focus on getting your house sold ,if it's not selling then the price is wrong
If you are on at the Home report value people will assume you are looking for more than that

OP, it sounds like you need to do some reading about the house buying and selling process in Scotland.

From googling, the link below gives an overview of the process, but I have no idea how it usually works in practice most people.

www.neilsons.co.uk/selling/buy-or-sell-first/

But it sounds strange that your experience with the asking price vs the home report price is the opposite of what the PP says.

Go to a mortgage broker rather than your bank. Your bank can only advise on their own criteria. If you own your house outright, have good credit scores and reasonable income there will be a solution.

@SpiderinaWingMirror

Go to a mortgage broker rather than your bank. Your bank can only advise on their own criteria. If you own your house outright, have good credit scores and reasonable income there will be a solution.

This. There will definitely be lenders out there that will consider your case. The positive thing is that your current house is on the market and no mortgage to consider. Bridging is very expensive

Remortgage current residence as a Let to Buy with no early repayment charges so you are free to sell when you are ready penalty free and use funds raised as deposit. Short fall obtain a residential mortgage on new residence. Alternatively bridging finance, no they are not difficult to obtain in fact easier than a regular mortgage and perfect solution if you have found your dream home and do not want to lose it. Rate will be circa 5% with 2% lenders fee + val fee + legals.

Interesting to hear that bridging is easy to get
Must look into that as I thought it was very difficult to get,the Banks pulled out of the market after the 2008 crash
Before that bridging loans were very common and most people used them for a short period of time to allow them to buy say on a Friday and sell on a Monday
The lack of bridging finance is the main reason people have to buy and sell on the same day
Traditional bridging was not suitable for long term use
Echo pp take advice from a good Financial advisor

Why don't you just sell yours at the valuation price? Your greed will mean you either miss out on the house of your dreams, or get stuck paying sky high interest rates on a loan - which will probably cost more than the difference in selling price that you purport to need.

I arrange bridging all the time for exactly this scenario, fact main res is unencumbered makes it even more straight forward, it is regulated bridging so not the choice of entire marker but still plenty of good options and lenders. A Broker will arrange this with ease.

Thank you for all the helpful advice. Decision has been made and we'll be renting. It wil give us time to decide where we want to be and what we can afford.
We're selling a five bedroom house with new kitchen, carpets and three bathrooms - asking price 250 k.... Is that really being greedy?

Depends on where it is!

Oh come on! You would struggle to find anything similar size anywhere in Scotland. Maybe in very rural Caithness that could be possible.

Is the problem that you live in a location where relatively few people want to live, or are able to live and access work/other services they want/need?

I can imagine that houses in rural Scotland can sometimes take a long time to sell for that reason, even when the price looks attractive to most people in more densely populated areas of the country?

@user1487194234 - it’s pretty unusual in this market for a property in Scotland to be on for a fixed price. Less than 1 in a hundred I’d say. Home report value very much governs what people will pay though although you would expect it to go over home report in popular area.