Looking for rentals at which point when selling?

[Sparklies]

Subject to decluttering and making the place a bit more presentable, we're planning on putting the house on the market late July/August time. The plan is to (hopefully) sell fairly quickly and then move into rental in an area 90 minutes or so away. We'll rent before eventually buying again, as it'll put us in a better position to buy and means it'll speed up our escape as we'll be the end of a chain.

Totally thinking ahead here, but at which point should we seriously start to look for rentals? I'm scared of having paid a deposit on a place only for our sale to fall through. I get the feeling there's a bit more tolerance when buying when this happens so times can be extended a little as people are reluctant to break chains. I'm guessing we should wait until exchange to be completely on the safe side, but that might not leave us much time to find somewhere reasonable to rent.

On a related note - how long is reasonable to leave between exchange and completion? I've only ever exchanged and completed on the same day before.

Thanks!!

Look for somewhere properly after exchange - you're right, any earlier and you risk not being able to sign up for your dream house because you haven't exchanged yet. If you can get 3-4 weeks between exchange and completion it would be great.

We did this a few years ago and only had a week between exchange and completion, not enough time to view rentals and get all the credit checks etc done. The tenancy was due to start 8 days after completion. We ended up with the removals company packing all our stuff and moving out as normal on completion, and the removal company stored our stuff for a week until they could take it to our rental house. A lot of removal companies will do this for you if you need to, and it only cost us £100 for a week of storage for a LOT of stuff. So don't panic if the dates don't match up, you can store your stuff and go and dump yourselves on relatives.

Thank you! That's reassuring to know removal firms will do that, although the only vaguely nearby relative is my brother in a tiny flat and there are the two of us with three preschool DCs! Maybe we'll camp on his lawn..!

Sounds like we'll need to push for a long exchange/completion gap if we can. I'm sure credit checks etc will be fine but it all takes time as you say. Hope our buyer isn't like we were and needs to do it on the same day.